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Our Dancing 
Days 

By 

Joseph Russell Taylor 




The Stratford Company 

Boston Massachusetts 

1922 






Copyright, 1922 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



DEC -8 '22 

©C\A690610 



Contents 






Page 


The Mocking Bird 


. 1 


The Waking of Brynhild . 


. 19 


The Nymph and Hylas 


. 43 


Lady Greensleeves 


. 67 


The Lady's-Tresses 


. 89 


Two Notes and The Reehase 


. 113 



The Mocking-Bird 



The Mocking- Bird 



THESE are the favors of our dancing days, 
I cannot keep them separate, and these 
The tragic figures stealing back to take 
Their places in the pretty twelve that made 
Our last cotillion famous : here they are. 
The Figure of the Tally-Ho was first. 

For that began it : Georgia perched with me 
High on the last seat of the crowded deck 
And highest, over a ship of children, yes, 
The crew from the old towns and all the years 
The last time gathered for a perfect play, 
Bound for the Country Club to dance night out. 
We made it brave adventure, worth the while ; 
A galleon cruise, a caravel crowding back 
Into the purple; while our storied huge 
Journeying chariot rumbled under us 
To trotting castanets, the sixteen hooves. 
Out to the country and the stars; till now 
The city made a moonset in the west 
Like what the true moon yet unrisen made 



2 Our Dancing Days 

Eastward ahead ; and now and now the elms 
That hung and hovered such mere shadows burst 
To a clash of boughs upon us, a cascade 
Of leaves that struck and swept us, caught and 

closed 
Upon the shrieks and laughter, and all the heads 
Bowed in a comic tangle knee to knee, 
And the song scattered. That was Old Madrid. 
' ' Where 's Georgia T ' ' ' Oh, hung up ! " * ' The 

third tree back!" 
How then the glimmering faces turned on us, 
The others there among them of our Four, 
A wind of escalade : ' ' The witch rides high ! ' ' 
''The witch and John the broomstick!" The 

witch laughed. 
And she believed ^twas real, the war with Spain. 



II 



And here I make confession that indeed 
I was the witch her broomstick : for I thought, 
God bless me, that I might be wrong to think 
The Four of Us were right : John Hampton, I, 
With Georgia Lee, and with Virginia Lee 
Beverly Stead, but never two by two, 
Always the Four of Us : I might be wrong. 



The Mocking-Bird 3 

And now he was off to Cuba in the morning, 
Beverly, I was sure they all were waiting 
My slow heart that yet might wreck us all. 
There's finer speech than talking: then with me 
How did Virginia dance, and Georgia how? 

Virginia, she was wild to go to war, 

Wait, with a gypsy rose between her lips. 

We two-stepped off to Spain, we danced with 

such 
Rhyme and assent of sure equality. 
She went with me so lightly closely one. 
That through the lamps I wheeled her so she 

touched 
White skirts afloat none of the cold fixed fires. 
They would have flamed and fallen, they were 

still. 
Why, that was sign enough. But then, who knows 
A woman 's heart ? The Figure might have told. 
The Shackle. Oh the Shackle : look, a tube, 
A barrel of belted ribbons, quaint and rich ; 
And twelve at once the girls thrust through it 

each 
A right arm shoulder-deep; and thronged to 

them 
Each of us caught and kept a hand ; and last 
The thing unlocked, and we untangled, yes. 



4 Our Dancing Days 

And pretty was the cluster of laughing girls, 
Pretty the bare arms faggoted, the hands 
Imploring, desperate all, — whose hand, whose 

arm? 
And I drew in my partner through the press, 
Virginia still, her wild hand captured mine. 

That music was right Spanish, Toreador. 
And now we snatched confetti, and throwing 

danced 
Through falling rainbows, frost on her dark 

hair, 
And her clear shoulders, and she sang. Why, so. 
Stuff of old sonnets, or my treacherous self, 
It was too easy reading, — not Virginia ! 

IlJt: 
A war no more than sonnet-stuff, I cursed 
To Georgia that my honor kept me home 
And Beverly's took afield; to all of which 
Georgia, flying before me her serene 
And supercilious profile, quite agreed. 
She was so self-effacing, so polite, 
It did depress me more. The dance struck up: 
She glanced, she made, as none but she could do. 
Her lashes insolent: ''What of me?" she said, 
''Virginia's dancing with a sword at hip, 



The Mocking-Bird 5 

And I must ride a broomstick." ''Sure," I 

swore, 
''You're riding!" and so caught her out away. 

The witch in violet, like the moon half-up, 
There was a wind at moonrise, yes ; she leaned 
Back in the hollow of my arm full weight. 
And with her breast a push-away like hands 
She flashed such fire against surrender, against 
Rapture, that we went reeling, we went falling. 
And only as by her arms-out went upright. 
"My dear Hidalgo," twirling on full stretch 
She said, "I meant a windmill." "What she 

meant. 
Resist it yet, what was it but the fresh 
Temptation of how right 'twould be to kiss 
The inside arm that was uplifted for it ? 
''You're really nice tonight," she said: and then 
Laughed sweetly : "Oh, you can 't of course : but 

where?" 
And I, before I knew it, I slid my hand 
Back to the loop that caught her up the white 
Flank- foam to let her step go brilliant: there 
For the increase of brilliance. We were first 
Under the lane of gold and white, and none 
That followed so with fury was picked up 
And carried through the dipping canopies. 



6 Our Dancing Days 

That was the Fi^re of the Scarf, and this. 
The lights were low, and we all went winged 

like moths, 
And over each girFs head the sparks went red 
That made the air one luxury, of the joss-sticks 
Thrust in their hair. But Georgia snapped her 

horns 
Upon me trying to bum me with the fire. 
Or take my throat with yet more haunting scent, 
Dark anodyne. Who knows a woman's heart? 
'Twas all too plain ! 'Twas my own selfishness ! 

IV 

Who knows a woman's heart? Why, every man 
Who knows a little of his own strange heart. 
It is no different faith binds men together. 
As that great day, no farther from our dance 
Than three, packed with excitements and fare- 
wells. 
When Beverly's Regiment was off to war, 
And we in my high windows waited them; 
Virginia with her sheaf of noble roses, 
American beauties, binding round the long 
Thomed stems of those deep crimsons her long 
gloves ; 



The Mocking-Bird 7 

That was a favor indeed. And that great day, 
It's only one more figure of the twelve, 
The Figure of the Regiment, the Rose. 

Ah yes, the Regiment. Their way was strait 
Between the glittering crowds ; from wall to wall 
The wind and fury of cheering came with them ; 
The band crashed into "Georgia", — southward 

ho!— 
And the instant ghosts thronged with us to salute 
The colors that came sheathed ; and in the russet 
Grim, and in the ripple of the rifles. 
Grim and unsmiling through the passion, came 
The Regiment. The great gray Colonel rode 
With roses on his sword-arm : were we then 
Fools that we did not know with what a red 
Upon his breast, the charge passed over him. 
He was to lie in the sun ? Not fools, not we : 
For through the storm, the beating bells and 

guns. 
The blast of shrilling throats that seemed to 

strike 
High heaven with the utmost heart's desire 
Innumerably one, we sent them forth 
To no ignoble errand, no mean death. 
The Seventeenth, off to the Spanish war. 



8 Our Dancing Days 

But with the Colonel rode his aides, and one 

Like dancing, so the bright bay hung and hung 

Timed to the horns upon the gay half-wing. 

That was Juanita. And as fairy-fine, 

Hung in my arm as Georgia in the other, 

Virginia tossed her roses, and they fell 

Slowly, slowly, instantaneously, 

A flame that was, a drip of splendid blood. 

They had made her room, Juanita, and her rider 

Wheeled to his chief again, red roses too 

Upon his sword-arm. That was Beverly Stead. 

V 

There were yet others of our saraband 
Escaped to wider floors. The Four of Us, 
We missed the Parasol, missed the Skipping- 

Rope. 
Lovelier lusters of the dance were ours, 
The Figure of the Lilac in the Dark, 
And of the Apple-Blossom in the Moon. 

The Four a fatal new way, two by two ; 
We had let the others go, the white-moth girl, 
And ghostlier than his moolit smoke the boy 
In khaki, and the glancing firefly, there. 
That was his sword between them ; let them go, 
And Georgia would not answer when they 
called. 



The Mocking-Bird 9 

The witch now of the silver mask and bust, 
The silver arms and insteps, and all else 
Shadow, and all but lost against the cool 
Moonlighted lilacs that had lost their flowers. 
Her dark head to that dusk of leaves was like 
An incantation. But the flowers were there, 
And leaned arms out to her, and mouth to mouth. 
The witch of the unkissed kisses, was it she 
Herself that was the lilac, all night long 
Unwearying to send out so clear a soul 
Though none regarded? Did it come in vain, 
For all must love in lilac-fragrance, all 
Must love in lilac fragrance, did it come 
In vain to me of all men ? Georgia said 
Quietly, with her face against the leaves, 
"They'll weary of their fragrance by and by." 

And I said nothing, drawing her hands away 

From those dark others, and herself as if 

Into the very veil, the chanting choir ; 

The orchard of the mystic tapestries 

That, figured gray and silver and ghost of green, 

And woven with moonstone blue, and lamped 

with stars, 
FeU hush in hush upon us ; how more gay 
A fragrance, how more dimpling, perishing. 

Then, 



10 Our Dancing Days 

While so we took the bloom-light on our hands 
And in our eyes, and every flower of them 
More lovely than by day, the blushing lost. 
There was a brilliant bird-song. Georgia gasped, 
Georgia caught my hands and danced, and danc- 
ing 
Hung like an elf would never move again. 
*'My dear, my dear!" she breathed, "a mocking- 
bird!" 

VI 
There's here a later figure always slips 
Between, the Figure of the Roman Candle, 
And here keeps place. The Fourth of that July, 
I reached the Sisters at the end of it, 
As on the very wind from Santiago 
Blowing, and the band playing El Capitan, 
And the old town at revel, a battle-light 
On minuets; the calcium splendor now, 
The gables and the pillars and the bays 
Crimson, conscious, looking; group on group 
The merrymakers struck to Cardinals 
And Carmens ; and the lanterns fallen green, 
Remote, relieved, as if they had taken breath. 

The fleet, the fleet had swept the seas of Spain. 
We watched like children, yes, with the great 
deed 



The Mocking-Bird 1 1 

Behind it all, our rockets turn and break 
To a rain of limpid violets, or let slip 
A handful of such amorous emeralds 
It seemed we heard them ringing bell on bell. 
' ' Gloriana ! the Don may attack us ! " thus to her 
Declaring I set the candle in her hand : 
''And where are the galleons of Spain?" Vir- 
ginia cried, 
And standing in a glory like a gay 
Martyr, bowered and showered with falling fires. 
She lifted a bride's face, a lily, a rose. 
Lifted to those full jets of flame that dropped 
Sunset through elms or snow along the roofs, 
Kissed burning and kissed frozen, a bride 's face. 

I thought 'twas still the play : a wider whirl, 
She had thrown the torch itself, she was off along 
The terrace, running to the steps, where now, 
Or it was all a dream that could not wake, 
There was the cycler w4th the telegram. 
She called us with a strange heart-stopping voice. 
And like a nightmare all the laughters, all 
The lusters, changed upon her, and she fell. 

VII 

The Figure of the Mocking-Bird, 'Twas here 
In our Ohio. For now more and more 



12 Our Dancing Days 

The mocking-bird comes nesting in the North, 
South of the South, true silver of the land 
Of Georgia's fathers. Singing in our night 
We heard him. Oh, we have the mocker's kin. 
The brown-thrush, he's our passion's crown, but 

this 
Beyond the rich twice-over of the thrush 
Was aria, opera. Oh, he sang half-voice, 
But such wild-warbling fires never before 
Through the white vow and witchcraft of the veil 
Impeached our northern moon. The mocking- 
bird? 

Well, I was conscious, surely, instantly, 
That I had known the bird I did not know. 
Surely I knew the mocking-bird, myself, 
However out of memory. It was mine. 
And phrase by phrase far-fallen my own life 

lived. 
Good art, the rest well lost, the best alone. 
Great heart, impatient most of its own joy, 
Vivid, voluble, outrunning time, 
'Twas my own heart that in the silver danced, 
The quick wild daring of a heart released 
That forthwith all at once to its desire. 
The long-deferred, the half-believed-in, ran. 



The Mocking-Bird 13 

The loveliness we loved, that loved not us ! 
'Twas gone, and we could breathe again. We 

heard 
As from the underworld an echo of it, 
Virginia's whistle somewhere. Georgia stood 
Sighing away from me, and Georgia said : 
''I know what's in your heart, hear what's in 

mine : 
That we shall never see him, have him, more." 

''Nothing's in mine" I said, ''but that I've 
kissed you." 

"My blossomed broomstick!" cried the wide- 
eyed witch : 

She laid white wicked hands upon me, breathed 

A wanton wonder at my very lips : 

' ' Kissed me ? " her white throat fluted, ' ' Oh, you 
dreamed ! 

You 've just been listening to the mocking-bird ! ' ' 

"Listen to the mocking-bird!" the echo laughed. 
One bough of the bloom swung clear, and floating 

set 
The melting touch and throb on hollow dusk 
Of white footfalls, Virginia. She to me, 



14 Our Dancing Days 

And Beverly straight to Georgia came, and 

caught 
Up from her feet : ' ' You little devil, ' ' he said, 
* ' It took a mocking-bird to bring you to it ! " 

VIII 

The Figure of Death. I think they sang at 

dawn. 
The mocking-birds. There's nothing now but 

guns, 
And out into the guns the Colonel steps 
Briskly, and with one aide goes pointing, here, 
There, for the Regiment's Nvay that so lies 

trapped 
In the Bloody Angle. I see the old man laugh. 
The gray moustaches and the flash of teeth. 
I see the boy stand crisp and cool erect. 
With all his lifelong grace and insolence 
Upon him, in his khaki long and gaunt 
And like dead gold, and under his hat's brim 
The beauty that was like a scornful girl's 
Pouting, the cigarette between his lips. 
I see, but never quite can catch his eyes. 

These were the two with roses on their swords 
When they rode out the cheering streets from 
home. 



The Mocking-Bird 15 

But one had roses with a lady's gloves 
Twined. And the lady 's gloves were now as red. 
Five men went out for them, and four remained. 
A second five. And then the Regiment 
Went over them and took it, El Caney, 
Took it, and brought them back. I think they 

sang 
Again at sunset, yes, the mocking-birds. 

IX 

Golden swords of pain w^hose points were 

wreathed 
With flowers, and left for wound the color and 

scent. 
Young passion, the sweet adder at her breast. 
The song was life, and death was in the song. 

In May we danced, in May we danced to it. 
Though none was dancing when we came again ; 
The jocund gliding sweetness lost itself 
In babbling voices; then our names were cried, 
They broke upon us like a snowfall, like 
A wind of laughter : oh, the Two had told. 
And next the violins deepened tone and time 
To fatal, Lohengrin, and they all caught hands 
And sang it, and w^e danced it, light and slow, 
And round and round the circle, two and two. 



16 Our Dancing Days 

And last, without transition as it seemed, 
The lamps were out, and in a cave of dusk 
The Figure was the Lantern, and the last. 
And all of us went ghostly and sea-green, 
And hid among us and let go the rich 
Rose-golden moons that splashed the gloating 

flame 
On throats and under-arms, to each of us 
A honeymoon, a bed-time, a hearth-fire. 
For each danced with his own, and I with mine, 
And he between Virginia and his sword; 
Lovers immortal; Raleigh with Regina, 
And Bennett Amy, and Lambert Monnie, and 

Knolles 
In khaki and he too between his sword 
And Julie ; and to each the violins, 
But only we danced to the mocking-bird. 



The Waking of Brynhild 



The Waking of Brynhild 



"H 



OW do you like it?" Betty Craven said, 
Arms out before me, turning round and 
round. 



'Twas fresh from Norway, 'twas a peasant's 

dress : 
A smart red bodice, glittering with white beads. 
That left her arms and shoulders bare through 

white ; 
An apron broidered open white upon 
The smart black skirt, and broidered open white 
The stockings to the smart black slippers ; last, 
A cap of spangled lace upon her hair. 
This was the wonder, Betty 's dense dark hair 
"Was never of the north; nor Betty's eyes 
That had such violets angry with the wind, 
The laughter such an eddy of dark stars; 
Nor any of her, the arms and golden hands 
That fell like fragrance, and the feet that 

stayed 



20 Our Dancing Days 

Like lilies. Oh, 'twas full of Spanish snow, 
'Twas full of mandolins, the little skirt 
That now so startled on the milkwhite step. 

* * Gyp sent it out of Norway, ' ' Betty explained, 
**For me to wear for you. It's all we get." 

*'It's all I want," I said. ''You didn't be- 
lieve—?" 

'*I did! And she was coming!" Violets quite 

Furious with the wind. ' ' She got as far 

As England. But her old mad Princess sent 

A leash of cablegrams, and snatched her back. 

Just as she was embarking on the boat 

At Liverpool. And now she'll never come." 

She turned, she brought me a slender little book. 

II 

''Brynhild!" upon a lift of breast I said. 
And whether near to laughter or to tears 
I hardly know, the book I made for Gyp 
Between my hands, I looked round Betty's 

rooms 
Like one arrested by some instant touch 
That looks about the house where he was bred 



The Waking of Brynhild 2 1 

And thinks ''Why, this is home !'' 'Twas mine 

indeed. 
The windows yellow with the maples, yes, 
The floors dark gold, and the old clock striking 

four. 
I was in love with Betty. Not with Gyp. 

Did Betty know it? She stood as if on tiptoe. 
Hands to her hair, and arms from fallen sleeves. 
And slim red waist left naked; tightening lips 
Remodelling her chin, and narrowing eyes 
That in their lashes swerved but were not gone. 
And richly calculating, richly too 
Confessing, with no motion Betty seemed 
To bow, to strut, to dance, catch hands and run. 
Lift lips and snatch away. Did Betty? Lord. . . 

'' You never give me poems !" she pouted now. 
And now, as the book came open in my hands, 
She whisked from it a letter, whisked and 

tucked 
Into the scarlet bodice : ''That" she laughed, 
"Is quite another poem! We're reading yours. 
I've read it, yes, but you're to read it to me." 
She perched midway the couch, she crossed her 

feet 
Beneath her, loosening from her knees the skirt. 



22 Our Dancing Days 

* * With notes, you know. The story is different. 
Isn't it strange that you and I, last night, 
Were listening to Briinnhilde? She's the 
same ? ' ' 

So on the floor I sat against the couch, 
An elbow at her knee, and told the tale, 
The older finer story of the north, 
By verse and verse, with much between the 
lines. 

Ill 
If I was asleep. 
If the sleeper was I, 
Then it was I 
That harked and groped 
Where time never was. 
On the hunt of myself : 
I and no other 
Where there was nothing 
That knew it and named it : 
This was the doom. 
This was the doom, 
The doom of Odin. 
But who was Odin? 
And what was doom ? 
And I, and I, 
If I was asleep ? 



The Waking of Brynhild 23 

IV 

Betty, or Gyp, or I, whoever slept 
Confessed it by the waking. Then 'twas I. 
I dreamed, I dreamed this year of my return 
That so had closed the new life with the old, 
And even now was dreaming the old dream 
Back to the startled moment when I first 
Revisited Gyp's house, as if her grave. 
This house of Gyp's long absence, and found 

here 
Gyp's sister, Gyp's own changeling. Gyp's last 

trick, 
Betty the elf grown woman with a look. 

And the old bold story had no witchcraft more. 
No stranger interchange of eyes and lips 
And breathing bodies of the two that wooed 
Brynhild, than now the exchange of each for 

each. 
Person for person, of the girls I loved. 
That was a blindness in the ancient tale, 
And none could tell it clearly. Yet to me 
It happened, and to them, and even now 
Was instantaneous change of mask for mask. 

Her eyes were gold, the color of clear fire. 
Why, no, more cool than pansies in the dew. 



24 Our Dancing Days 

Her face was like a coolest cameo 
Of firm red lips, of faintly hollowed cheeks 
Untouched by her own flame of burning hair, 
Her copper-lustered hair. "Why no, now no : 
Untouched by that thick gloom and gloss of 

night 
Which now let slip the black half-wings of 

storm 
On either side her veils of long lash-play. 

''Well, what's the matter?" Betty touched her 

hair. 
"I'm pretty as I can be. Go on, go on." 

V 

I slept in the firelight. 

Cold was the hall. 

And my bed was a-cold, 

But the fire danced sweetly. 

And a wind on the roof 

From over old battlefields 

Blew, and I knew 

That never again 

Should I ride the wind's whinney 

With the dead on my knees. 

Never again go 

Choosing the slain, 



The Waking of Brynhild 25 

But wait to be chosen. 

I was a woman. 

And I was waiting. 

And yule came white, 

And lammas came green, 

But never came he 

That should wake me and make me 

The thrall of a house-fire, 

The slave of a needle. 

The drudge of a love. 

VI 

No, no, the woman chooses, not the man. 
And I was never faithless, nor forgot, 
And needed no love-potion. It was they, 
The two I loved, the two that loved me, chose, 
Not I, though both were open breasts to me. 
For Betty now, Gyp then, was always armed, 
Always defenseless ; like a nude in the sun, 
A nude in the sun, a nude with a naked sword. 
That with the airy glitter of point and edge 
All round her haggard laughing loveliness. 
Dark Betty as burning Gyp, made to my eyes 
A costume. All how like and how unlike. 
Black Betty, brazen Gyp, the old bold tale. 
The quarrel of the queens, not less but more 



26 Our Dancing Days 

Queens, when the two were naked in the river, 
But only one was naked of the ring. 

''Jimmy! You make me nervous!" Betty 

laughed : 
Laughed, as primly over her knees again 
She tugged the little skirt that spilled such 

snow: 
Laughed with a subtle swim of her dark eyes : 
The stars slipped, and the rich still mask of 

night 
Trembled and wavered, danced and glanced on 

me. 

VII 
I slept in the firelight. 
I lay like a warrior. 
But no man ever 
Coiled in an iron-cap 
Braids so many. 
Or stretched from the ring-mail 
Sleek sleepy arms 
And knees of such dimple, 
And no man ever 
Had breast that was tipped 
With two sparkles of firelight. 
What was between them? 
The thorn of sleep. 



The Waking of Brynhild 27 

I had chosen in battle 
The one that he would not, 
Odin : and now, 
Now I was this thing, 
The girl in the armor, 
Left sleeping, left lone 
In the hall of the windows 
That drowsed and doted 
With the fire outdoors, 
The fire in the moat. 
And never the rain, 
Nor the mist, nor the moon 
Could quench the quivering 
Ripple and run 
That slid up the stone 
And over the shields 
And up to the topmost 
Wild banner in heaven. 

vm 

*'Our quiet windows too," said Betty. **Look." 

We looked a moment: fragrant afternoon 
Breathed at the open windows, glow in glow 
Of maples ; and so soft and hushed an air. 
We heard a piano, somewhere over the street, 
Bubble and chime as if it danced midway 



28 Our Dancing Days 

The yellow leafage ; and the only stir 
Was in the sunlit curtains of the bay, 
Still shadows of still leaves that fell and fell, 
Stirred in the curtains, crept across the floor. 

"Here's something in the story too," I said. 
"As I came down the street a sparrowhawk 
Flew before me, flew before me, and perched 
Upon your highest gable. And that's how 
Sigurd the Volsung found his Brynhild once. 
That was after the waking. And I mine." 

"And the leaves fall in Norway," Betty said. 
And from the scarlet bodice drawing again 
The letter, here and there she read it me. 
Smooth eyelids and smooth cheeks and smooth 

round throat 
And red lips playing, and only now and now 
Lash-lifting to the cool and conscious look. 

" 'Ah, but I know that Father's growing old. 
And Betty is grown a woman,' " Betty read. 
" 'What can I do? I'm wanted over here. 
Aslauga' — that's her Princess, that's her 

Monster, — 
'Aslauga keeps me, when no other will. 
She'll never live without me, so she cries 



The Waking of Brynhild 29 

With passion, and I kiss her, and we weep, 

And say no word for weeks of going home. 

We aren't even stared at any more. 

But sometimes it 's as strange as first it was : 

The great Norsewoman, fair and fat and — yes, 

She 's forty ! — and the odd American, 

The pale-green girl that's with her everywhere. 

Haven't I told you that she calls me Yip? 

Tell that to Jimmy. And tell him . . .' " 

Betty stopped, 
And folded up the sheet, and tucked away. 

I said: ''You'll tell me?" and she answered: 
''Read!" 

IX 

The doom of Odin 

Is never all good, 

Never all bad. 

No coward could ride 

Through the moat, no dastard 

Ford the flickering 

Witch-fire and wake me. 

Maybe no man. 

But once in a dream, 

When the fire seemed a sunset, 

I saw how a boy 

Drove horse after horse 



30 Our Dancing Days 

Into the river-flash: 

One swam over, 

A great gray stallion. 

That was his horse. 

And once when the fire 

Seemed the flame of a forge, 

I saw how a lad 

Broke sword after sword 

Like bells, but the last 

Bell-clang was the anvil 

Cloven in twain. 

A great gray war-blade, 

That was his sword. 

And once in a lightning 

I saw the white horses 

Running the sea. 

And a long sea-dragon 

Plunge, and the dragon 

Dip on the sail. 

And he was a man. 

And that was his ship. 



''It's long since Gyp has written me," I said, 
Filling a pipe to Betty: " I don't know now: 
How ever did she meet her Princess first T' 



The Waking of Brynhild 31 

''Gyp's way," said Betty. ''When she went 

abroad, 
Jimmy, I really truly think 'twas you, 
You and your poem, that turned her fancy 

north. 
She went alone to Norway, for to see 
And to admire, to learn Norwegian, learn 
Life, and to make you follow her, maybe, 
And maybe to forget you. In a month 
She was a feature at the village feast, 
Declaiming Peer Gynt! There the Princess 

came. 
Peer Gynt, or else your poem turned to Norse." 

*'A boy's pipe-smoke." I waved away the 

shoal 
Between us. **But the very Norns were such." 

"But weren't there five poems to Gyp?" The 

smoke 
Avoided her bare arm and followed after. 
"Vanna, and Badoura, and Isolt. 
All's left of her, the torso of Isolt. 
And here's the Brynhild. So I know them all 
Except the Hylas. And to me not one." 



32 Our Dancing Days 

**To you? No verses, Betty. Never a verse. 
I wish you to consider what that means." 
Then I sat straight, I stared about the rooms. 
*'Why, Where's the Portrait? Where's the 

Gyp?" I cried, 
''Tony Farrar's Dancing-Girl in Gold?" 

*'My dear!" She said it softly. Then she 

laughed : 
Laughed at the quaint dismay I must have 

looked : 
Laughed richly, laughed contentedly, a fresh 
Wind for my riding, eyes and breath on me 
Luxuriously abandoned. ''That's indeed 
A poem to me. I had it moved today. 
Upstairs, to where it shall forever hang, 
Right opposite my bed. I'll take you up. 
No, no, don't shut the book. We've yet to kill 
The dragon, and we've yet to ride the fire." 

"And yet to kiss the sleeping beauty," I said. 

XI 

All the green hangings 
Of the hall in the firelight 
Rippled like cliffs 
In the run of a like-light 



The Waking of Brynhild 33 

Up from the water-sun, 

Cliffs of old fern. 

And I, I was watching 

Hard, for the brink 

Of the rock was alive, 

The snake-neck wavering 

Down, and the beak of it 

Gabbled the water. 

And reared, and swallowing 

Reeled to the welkin. 

The dragon was drinking. 

And that was Fafnir. 

I named it, the name 

That I never had heard, 

Though now there was nothing 

But the run up the fern 

Of the waterfire. Hark, 

I knew I would hear it. 

The death-wallow of thunder. 

And I knew when it died 

It was Fafnir was dead. 

And the fire ran the fern 

Like the glance of my eyes to him, 

Look, look, blood-red. 

Oh for Fafnir 's-Bane 

Wiping his reeking 

Great brand on the bracken ! 



34 Our Dancing Days 

XII 

**But Betty, Betty, how it should be done! 
Think of the music that we heard last night ! 
No, don't,'' I said. ''Alas for Brynhild's 
dream. ' ' 

And Betty sprang across me, hand and foot 
A flash and fragrance on me, and perched now 
At the piano played that music through, 
That music j oh, but light, but light, her way. 

And I sat still, and all my heart again 
Leaped to our great soprano while she played. 
And the drunken violins shrieking all at once 
Wide-winging discords that were yet all tune. 
And the whinneying oboes : hark, 'twas she her- 
self, 
Hoyotoho ! Hoyotoho ! And wild 
As swallows that went mad about the sky 
The rocket of her vivid crying topped 
The topmost wind of music, and at last 
Struck one amazing note so clear and high 
'Twas like an arrow into the heart of heaven. 
The chooser of the slain. 'Twas we were chosen. 
Snatched by the eagle of her golden voice. . . 



The Waking of Brynhild 35 

Voices of children playing on the pave. 
And the old fragrance, yes, of burning leaves. 
A long long autumn moment sweet and sad, 
The sun was from the curtains, from the trees, 
And the room dusky, lighted yet with gold. 
*'Is it so noble a story?" Betty's hands 
"Were fallen in her lap : her eyes came cool : 
*'So noble murders, noble treacheries?" 

I crossed to her ; there was a storied old 
Deep armchair in the window-bay, that faced 
The darkening room; and there I brought the 

book, 
And there brought Betty, like a minuet, 
Curtesying in her red and white and black, 
With a kiss upon her fingers ; and she perched 
Against my shoulder on the chair 's wide arm. 



XIII 

All the green hangings 
In the light of the fire 
Seemed woods that waited 
The change of the leaf, 
"When the stags are lean, 
When the fern is brown, 



36 Our Dancing Days 

And the birch-top yellow, 

Yet green go the ways. 

And I, I was listening 

Hard, for I heard 

The talk of the woodpeckers 

Over the brown burned 

Acorns pattering 

Down through the oak-leaves : 

Words, had the woodpeckers 

Words, that I heard them? 

*'He rides from the Dragon-Heath 

Nearer and nearer, 

She sleeps upon Hindfell, 

Green go the ways ! ' ' 

And he came, and he came, 

But his eyes were away from me. 

Only, I saw 

The great gray stallion, 

And the bicker of the chain-mail, 

And once how his bridle-hand 

Flashed, and I knew 

'Twas the ring of the dwarf 

Andvari, the ring 

That Fafnir the Dragon 

Had died to let go. 

And he rode, and he rode 



The Waking of Brynhild 37 



Singing — I knew the words 

''Green go the ways 

To the Hall upon Hindfell !" 



XIV 

''Gold go the ways" said Betty at my shoulder, 
"To the house in Maple Street. And look, the 
fires." 

Children were burning leaves about the street, 
We breathed the fragrance; and on Betty's 

walls 
Was light as of old hearth-fires, memories. 
Dreamy, dreamy, and dancing rosy-red 
Till all the room grew brighter as the dusk 
Deepened. And I took Betty's hand, and drew 
Her cool arm round my neck, and to my heart 
Her captured fingers. And I slipped the book 
Behind the scarlet bodice, and around. 
To lay it open in her lap. "You read," 
I said to Betty. On her breast the beads 
Shot little sparkles, clicked as faint as fancy, 
Against my cheek. But Betty took the book, 
And bravely, without a falter, read the end. 



38 Our Dancing Days 

XV 

Dew in a rose 
That panted and laughed 
With the wet bee 's sweetness, 
Light upon eyelids 
That clung against opening, 
Cool gray windows 
And the fire come in. 
The first that I saw 
"Was my own hand lifted 
And ringed with the ring, 
And then his eyes, 
Sigurd the Volsung, 
Sigurd that leaned to me 
Yet from his kissing me. 
Me — now I knew myself ! 
Valkyrie ! Valkyrie ! 
Brynhild the Lover! 

XVI 

And *'0h, poor Gyp!" she said. And we were 

still. 
Watching the firelight dancing on the walls, 
Listening to the children on the paves, 
And, once again, a piano, far away. 
Playing from the Valkyries, nothing else. 



The Waking of Brynhild 39 

We heard it through. Then suddenly the book 
Slid from her lap with none to pick it up. 
*'I wasn't asleep." she gasped, ''never asleep! 
No, I must go and dress. And we're to have 
The real mince-pie I made you with my hands. 
You make the lights. There's Father coming 
home.'* 



The Nymph and Hylas 



The Nymph and Hylas 



A mask for every wave to drop and lift, 
Face up to the hollow of heaven, lying 

afloat 
Upon their hands that clapped me feet to throat, 
Caught me and clasped, loosed me and set 

adrift, 
Upon their palms, my nymphs, their fingertips, 
And only now and then pulled back to take 
The sudden birdsong in my throat, the break 
Over my face of laughter and of lips, 
I took the sliding cloud into me thus, 
The long wave-crawling in my veins so felt. 
It seemed indeed that I must tremble and melt 
And suffer a w^ater-change delicious, 
Delicious and destroying, until I lay 
Scattered in white wave-play. 
And veining with my heart the ripple away. 



II 



Ah, yes, but one should see the river-light 
Come beating on his eyelids, till the page 



44 Our Dancing Days 

Eipples, remembering how lie swam indeed, 
And in that buoyant indolence embraced 
Ripple and cloud at once, and at one's cheek 
Fire, and across one's very face the blue 
Kingfisher's wide-winged swerve, to make it 
real. 

The fifteen finished idyls, there they were, 
In the old progression. First Theocritus. 
*'A hollow land, a blossoming waterside. 
Where in the midst the nymphs arrayed their 

dance, 
The sleepless deities only seen by chance, 
Malis, Nycheia, and Eunice April-eyed. 
And now the boy was dipping with the jar. 
And now the nymphs had caught him head and 

hand. 
For love of the Argive lad fluttered and fanned 
The hearts of them. . ." Why not? And thence 

by verse 
And verse proceeding. Summer mirrors. None 
Of winter, a flight beyond me. Autumn, yes. 
Cold blows the autumn on a swimmer's head. 
**The floating leaves surprised us, touched like 

cold 
Flat hands and clung : Nycheia 's limpid head 
With sudden wine-dark leaves was chapleted. 



The Nymph and Hylas 45 

And Malis perked a faun's-ear pointed 
gold. . ." 

What fish go over like a flock of birds. 

What bells the ripples ring. What stars come 
down. 

''Ghosts of the golden thighs went up black 
night : 

A bubble of gold had slipped against my brow 

And clung there, — oh, the moon, that sud- 
denly now 

Shot to the topmost heaven aloft alight. . ." 

Why, all my youth was in it. What a thing, 
I used to take the notebook in my teeth 
And swim Scioto to the diving log, 
Dive, and hold on by stones, come up and write 
Wet-fingered, and in love with all green words, 
And all still meanings. If the verse runs dry, 
At least I drank. Ah, as indeed I drank 
My fill of pure spring-water, thrilling cold, 
At the river's bottom, like a child that finds 
Thirst and his mother's breast together at once. 
And I drank much who learned how every hour 
Is something new and strange in the water- 
world ; 
Waves now, a little dance of up and down 
Are waves, and pass the motion on away, 



46 Our Dancing Days 

The seeming of the surface ; he who dives 
Into the quiet beneath looks up and sees 
The gather and break-apart of subtle lines 
Across an emerald light; no more than that. 
And every hour is silence, wonderful. 
Only, like the opening of a door 
That shuts again on music, one can hear 
His comrade diving, entering so the calm 
And the inviolate color. What of her? 

I dived for Hylas once to hear her call 
For calling Heracles; the weird strange voice 
Came insult, and the caller ankle-plucked 
Vanished from air; how then her green-capped 

face 
Was dark against the laced and quivering flame 
That burst into such jets of snow ; no myth, 
But breast-deep fury footing the ribbed sand 
That held our shadows in a net of fire 
Was Zoe splashing ! Yes, that nymph was Zoe. 

And Gyp, and Gyp, could she indeed forget 

The actual fact and comedy of it. 

The underwater kiss we tried to kiss ? 

*'If you can catch me!" And all at once she 

sprang 
Toe-tip and dived ; and I, into the bowl 



The Nymph and Hylas 47 

Of brimming where she melted ; turning deep, 
I saw her sweep of motion smoking gold 
Turn too across the water-sun. The kiss? 
We nearly drowned. We never tried it more. 

And Bee the wedded woman, Bee that sent 
The book for bride 's-gift back to Betty now. 
As all things else come back to Betty now. 
Why, now I vowed a bachelor's last night 
To Bee, the nymph she was, and with due rites 
To celebrate, with each refill of pipe 
Between the firelight and the lamp a verse. 
And naught of Betty, of Betty naught at all. 
Child, you were not a sonnet yet of years. 

Ill 

Wild wind, what wild wind wantoned in my 

Three? 
They courted every lightning, flashed and 

glanced 
Naked and vivid to the storm, and danced 
Three like a hundred, beckoning bold and free. 
And then the blind rain struck, the water hissed. 
The water smoked, and settled into spray 
Beneath the fog of tempest, levelled and lay 
Shrilling a tight song, one flat shoal of mist. 



48 CXir Dancing Days 

Where were my dancers heaven had fallen to 

woo? 
Under the multitudinous crystalline 
Icicled nipples, from the shrieking keen, 
The keen cold pelting, I dropped homeward too. 
Dusked dying circles, moment's films, were 

shed 
On dark light overhead. 
The Three were orb on orb of sleep outspread. 

IV 

"Look not so strange upon your friend," said 

Bee. 
'*No, I'll be honest. Do look strange. In place 
Of Gyp herself here's one mere Bee Carlisle 
To greet a certain Jimmy Usher, come 
This moment, which is earlier than his word. 
And Gyp's gone over to meet and bring you 

back. 
And I 'm Gyp 's guest, and this is my third day. 
She's not had time to warn you. All ex- 
plained?" 

Even from the first surprise with which she met, 
Bee in her bathing-costume on Gyp 's dock. 
My greeting, it was fate in her bold eyes; 



The Nymph and Hylas 49 

It was as if when my eyes said to hers, 

We two can love ! hers answered, "Why, we do ! 

And while she spoke the long white coat blew 

out, 
Blew, in a fine tense curve like wings, and left 
Her figure brilliant, in the grapeskin black 
Only from breast to hips, and only else 
Black-sandalled, brilliant; with the gay white 

cap 
Hiding her hair, and folded to one ear. 
She looked the lady of a virelay 
Masked as a boy, turned what a rakish page. 
Escaping to her lover. Me. I said: 
"And what else are the coat and sandals for?" 

''What else than what?" she laughed, ''than 

what you mean?" 
Yes, what I meant : to have a swim with Bee 
Had turned already tame, to be one more 
Couple of all the couples hand in hand 
That danced against the breakers, girls that 

posed 
Arms out, a lift of knee, a jut of hip, 
Against the heavy snowdrift, and were lost, 
The heads like flowers along the next wave- 
slope, 



50 Our Dancing Days 

Why, but a moment since I could not dream 
Adventure finer: I could now. *'You mean 
To run away together ? I '11 go dress ! ' ' 

''You're dressed," I said: ''we're rowing across 

the bay, 
We're going for wine for drinking on the 

rocks, 
To read the Book of Hylas I've brought you." 

All this was in an actual moment ; there. 
Wrapped in her smoke, my steamer went; the 

sun 
Burned through the cloud that at my coming 

took 
The glitter from the water. And while now 
I dropped into the skiff within the dock 
I had half-time to wonder at myself ; 
And Erie 's rich bold crowding of whitecaps, 
And every whitecap breaking miles and miles. 
The myriad bells of foam that flashed and 

flocked 
A joy unsexed, beautiful danger, they 
That wreathed the water's green and dateless 

youth 
With jocund winter leaping at the brow, 



The Nymph and Hylas 5 1 

They were all discovered spaces of my heart, 
They were all the run of snow in my own veins. 
''Jimmy, you mean it?" Bee had cried, "for 

me?'* 
And hugging round her close the coat she 

laughed, 
And stooping reached a hand, a vivid arm, 
And dropped wings-up to me, and out we came. 



Between me and my melody of her 
She thrust her very self, where on the shore 
I piped upon the wax-bound pipes the more 
To celebrate her eyes, what gold they were, 
Malis, within the mirrored noon who now 
Made of her face a lily, and here and there 
Bloomed, and was gone, the lily not so fair 
Whose green stem bound itself upon her brow. 
And the pipes warbled : when she looked at me, 
Out of her eyes I saw the white fear pass, 
And leave them jewelled dark, the twilight's 

glass. 
And the pipes fainted; ah, but never she! 
Or ever the thrown pipes fell I plunged to meet 
My image. No, more sweet. 
Lilies not mine, nor yet the ripple 's seat. 



52 Our Dancing Days 

VI 

I pulled into the wind, across the bay. 
The beach, with all its dancing water-flowers, 
Fell off at once behind, till shoreward now 
'Twas wide clear violet-blue that shoaled and 

played 
Through a smother and shudder of sunlit 

amber-green 
That fell and f ountained whiter on white sands 
In to dark elms and uplands of the vine. 
And these hung still, but farther and more far. 

Half-way across the bay, for very joy 
I stayed the skiff upon the outstretched oars; 
For joy of that wild cradling, of the dance 
Whose reel and swing had passed into our 

veins ; 
For joy to ride the moments as they came 
And passed, with back-tossed tresses of the 

snow. 
And yet were passing. Only this was 

strange. 
That on the sliding billow-and-run the shore 
Kemained dead-heavy fact, the still stiff land 
To which in the first giddiness we sent 
An eye for balance. That was yesterday, 



The Nymph and Hylas 53 

And this was now. And this was Bee that now 
Leaned in from heaven and leaped out of the 

deep 
To meet me in the enamored opposite. 

She nursed the book. "I never dreamed'* she 

said, 
''That you could be as sick for it as I am. 
I mean this holiday, this escape, from what 
Has grown to be the day's work. Making love." 

Her gloom was desperate. "Hands All Round!" 

I laughed. 
''You shall go courtesying round the ring no 

more. 
And I too, I'll take hands and part no more. 
Today at least. No making love today. 
But who's been here? Not Tony? Farquhar, 

Guest?" 



'■^ 'V, 



No, Tony comes tomorrow." And now she 
laughed. 
"No doubt it seems we're doing the selfsame 

thing. 
Dick took me sailing. Yesterday Ned Guest 
Canoeing. Look, the withered waterlily! 
Oh, but we'll sign and seal it, no love-making !'* 



54 Our Dancing Days 

** Steady the boat!" I leaned across the oars. 
And Bee that leaned as quickly took my face 
Lightly, prettily, in her hands, and kissed me. 
**Now we can read my stolen poem,'' she said, 
*'But make her own true first edition soon I" 



VII 

Her hair asleep, that was the rich surprise ; 
'Twas bound to her head, 'twas braid in braid 

green-mossed, 
And woven with watercress in flower like frost. 
She dazzled more than sunlight on my eyes; 
And so my eyes that hung with rainbows air 
Flashed on her beads of trembling wet, like 

pearls 
And opals, that so multiplied the girl's 
Eyes to a hundred, glittering and aware, 
That her eyes caught the panic ; out and through 
The rape of sun and shadow along the sand 
We ran a sudden-warbling hand in hand, 
But shy of each other in such heaven, two 
That seemed ourselves; and one ran sparkle- 
tressed, 
And the eddies of her breast 
Convulsed with lovely anguish unconfessed. 



The Nymph and Hylas 55 

VIII 

And that was something to put out of mind 

The withered waterlily, yes. A kiss 

Swung high, swung low, and most all swung 

round 
Upon the oars I leaned across, till now 
The withered waterlily was safe behind her. 
'Twas in the living water close to her ; 
So clear it almost broke to open air; 
Something not sliding with the sliding wave, 
But dipping and returning. It was like 
A drowned man's hand. And ''Gyp?*' I said 

that dropped 
Back on the oars full length, ''her book shall be 
More better for our reading of the proof." 

' ' The Book of Hylas. Row, and 1 11 read, ' ' said 
Bee. 

'Twas in her lap, she had a lap again, 
The open book. I glanced beyond and saw 
That knock upon the door and floor of nothing 
Hang still and dip, while now the sliding wave 
"Went by, as if 'twere following us; the thing 
That looked a man's hand reaching up to day. 
In the next wave, nothiing. In the next and 
next, 



56 Our Dancing Days 

Nothing. I had not even glanced to shore 
For fear of landmarks. ''No, not yet," I said, 
"Not here among your ghostly gentlemen 
That over running water make their vows." 

Forgotten reach to the forgotten light. 

"Oh, for my ghostly gentlemen!" The last 

Gesture. Prayer to heaven. Or curse at fate. 

"Ned and another boy canoed across 

From Marblehead," she was frowning. "And 

last night 
When those two boys put out in a canoe 
To cross four miles of lake, straight into storm, 
And laughed at our distress, and mine was 

great, — 
Well, you may call them ghostly gentlemen!" 

The ghostly hand. I had refused it, yes. 
That I would do again, that was for Bee. 
Yet how the thing kept knocking at my heart ! 
"Safe over, and the ferryman paid," I said, 
Shipping the oars how gladly; "Come and 
play!" 

IX 

"Pan!" she laughed in her throat: no thrush 
as rich 



The Nymph and Hylas 57 

As that one ; Eunice fronting breast to air 
Midway the current that tugged her by the hair 
Crouched deeper, sparkle of eyes, an instant 

witch. 
So we let go our feet, and fingers caught 
At arm's length drifted, and the river-sigh 
Drew us, the shallows danced us down the sky, 
The very bubble and chime were in the plot. 
How else so dipped and dallied and swung wide. 
Without a pull of hand or turn of cheek. 
Should we be floated to the sleepy sleek 
Touch and recoil and touch of side to side? 
The scent and blossoms of the grape hung low, 
The leaves ran fire, ran snow. 
Never was thrush as rich as that one, no. 

X 

The mood fell from me with the touch of earth 
When there at the old wine-dock we dis- 
embarked. 
The mood that made me fancy a drowned hand. 
And up through ruffling vineyards to the 

towers. 
The castle of cold stone, that looked so far 
Over the thousand fleeces of the lake, 
We came ; where grapes glanced blue in blow- 
ing leaves. 



58 Our Dancing Days 

Like her that slipped into her sleeves, and 

flashed 
So gay a grape-stained nymph; and with the 

coat 
Shut now, and only her subtle insteps free, 
Discreeter lady never marketed. 
We brought from those deep musty cellars wine, 
One flask of dry Catawba. And so came down 
To the rocks, where now the flashing crashing 

waves 
Widened to silver-sheeted afternoon. 

So drunk, unto the utmost tang of it, 
So drunk on its own rocks, the good wine kept 
Its incommunicable bouquet and bloom, 
And the sharp clinging flavor of the grape, 
Virgin, like knives of sweetness. Pledges first. 
And Bee held high the cup, we had a cup, 
Let fall the coat, stood up a splendor, Bee 
Of the old inviolate beauty. Bee of all 
The loyalties and the coquetries, and looked 
Young Ganymede, if it was Ganymede 
And not Himself, the long-legged liquid-eyed 
Young Love, that was cup-bearer to the gods, 
And drank. ''To Gyp!" "To Tony!" And 

as she drank 
From the deep-creviced rock the silver fount 



The Nymph and Hylas 59 

Sprang like an apparition to the sun 

Beside her. ' ' To Ned Guest ! ' ' And the ninth 

wave 
Filled all the coves with thunder and cataracts, 
Khythmic confusion, ordered hurry, like 
A snowdrift, to her very sandal-soles. 



And while we read our Hylas the west blew 
On bold bright waters naked to the sky. 
Recoiled, returned, the hollow of the wave 
Was curved so smoothly it drew the imaged sun 
To fiery flosses, gathering blaze on blaze; 
And at its curl and curve, with the instant sharp 
Shadow of its own self upon itself, 
'Twas jewel-green translucence ; then the foam. 
Blossomed and burst to keen and lovely shapes, 
Of silver ribbons falling, of reedy slim 
Hyaline cups inverted, look you now, 
'Twas all one climb of snow that struck and 

quenched 
Through fire; and there across the wide wet 

rocks 
The silver lilies stood, the fountains fell ; 
And now the booming harps were glittering 

spray 
That fell, and fell in to us, and showered us 



60 Our Dancing Days 

With the ninth wave whose pelting chill was 

like 
Emotion in emotion. And through all 
Our hearts went out abroad upon the vast 
Beautiful waters, to the perfect pure 
Horizon, to the sky, the line of peace. 



XI 

Suddenly overhead the amber girl 
Was hung in hollow haze, the diving sky 
Following down to touch on shoulder and thigh 
Discovery, new-moons of lighted pearl. 
How then she melted into a sudden mist 
Her shadow-stroke of arms and legs, and how 
The raining fires were vacant of her now, 
Nycheia of the boast she went unkissed. 
'Twas far, 'twas under the swallow-cliff, 'twas 

in 
The deepest dusk she ended that wild chase. 
Collapsing with the inverted back-flung face. 
And curving on my hands a glimmer green 
As opal : and out on air the swallow yet 
Along the ripple met 
The lips and nipples of the violet. 



The Nymph and Hylas 61 

XII 

''There was a day," said Bee. ''It's afterglow. 
There goes the Arrow across to Put-in-Bay 
That brought us home Our Lady of the Lake." 

I dropped far out, a splash of blue in gold, 
The flask, upon the sudden seeing again 
The thing I fancied and forgot, a hand 
That caught the throw. Not Hylas but another. 
"So let's go face Calypso, right," I said. 

"She's that!" cried Bee. I held for her the 

coat 
That held, "I'd have small pocket else!" she 

laughed, 
The book; midway the softer-sounding trees, 
"I'm going to need a pocket," she professed; 
And with the first look back across the bay, 
The eastward purple bloom of sky and lake 
Where yet the whitecaps caught the afterglow, 
And where, no larger than a golden gull, 
A single boat danced on a gleam of oars, 
"I knew it!" she cried. "I know who's with 

her too." 
She made a face. "Ned Guest. Returned for 

more." 



62 Our Dancing Days 

*' They've used a glass to find our boat," I said. 
''Of all the mean suspicious . . . No. it's not. 
It's your tomorrow. It's Tony. Come be good." 

''What, did I kiss you?" Bee, she tugged 

again 
The white cap over her ears, she tucked the last 
Black ringlet in to sleep. "That wasn't real, 
That boy's kiss, that unpetticoated thing." 

"Why so" I said, "do circle-dimpled knees 
Outluster all the gartered: the nymph's kiss." 

"When I kiss Tony it shall be" she vowed, 
"Kicking this way and that my skirts that 

whisper 
'Lady, lady!' " And with the laugh of that 
We launched again, and riding with the wind 
Lightly along the fresher-dancing dusk 
Half-way we met them ; but before the boats 
Dipped side by side the laughter from our 

hearts 
Had vanished. What was Gyp crying to us ? 

' ' That poor lad 's body was on our very beach ! ' ' 

"Ned Guest?" cried Bee. 



The Nymph and Hylas 63 

Gyp shook her head. ''His friend. 

He must have been there half the crowded day. 

They've found the empty canoe." 

''But Ned?" cried Bee. 

We did not know it then, 'twas the last word 
That Tony Farrar answered: "Not yet found." 
Not yet, and never yet. Tony himself 
By now had turned the skiff between the swells 
So daintily that Gyp not even swayed ; 
His taking stock of us was quiet and quick. 
As quick as Gyp's; now as he pulled away 
I heard her sing the old song under her breath, 
The Hands All Round. And she had smiled at 

Bee. 
I though it was Gyp Craven that was drowned. 

Bee did not smile. "That was his hand," she 
said. 

XIII 

Love, liked a naked diver, leaped and met 
His leaping image, sudden and swift to start 
Up from the under-heaven of her heart; 
Plunged, and was gone, and the heaven is per- 
fect yet. 



64 Our Dancing Days 

And though the burst and plunge was fathom- 
deep, 
The naiad dimpling drowned him in her kiss, 
And took that violence for no more than bliss, 
And held her buxom laughter yet asleep. 
And none that wandered by that water knew 
How Love was lost, and by what waxen ways 
How Death was found and fettered to new 
days. . . 

(Ah, Betty, so things all come back to you.) 

And Heracles the wanderer and the guest 

Is yet upon the quest, 

But golden Hylas numbered with the blessed. 



Lady Greensleeves 



Lady Greensleeves 



OCTOBER. On Regina's wedding day, 
While yet the leaves are green, a storm of 
snow. 



Snow in the lap of summer. When I came 

At sunset, yes, there was a sunset, home. 

The wet streets mirrored our white roofs and 

lawns. 
The maples were eross-laced with wanton white, 
And every lilac blossomed in cold jest. 
Snow that was far more native to my heart 
Than those dark towers of leafage; that was 

strange. 
The bronze belated summer, not the white ; 
And yet such wonder, with such sympathy 
It imaged thus my state and circumstance, 
That I imagined how the jocund veil 
Fell cold about her, fell what sudden snow 
Upon dark memory and my own dim face. 
Regina ever loved the tragic mask. 



68 Our Dancing Days 

And if indeed I loved the bride her eyes 
I should lament her lacking the one thing 
Could add them sparkle, word of how at home, 
There in Ohio, fancy, on that poor boy, 
It snowed, it snowed, when all the leaves were 
green. 

But not in France. It's moonlight now in 

France. 
The mooncloud drifts, the turrets are snowed 

with sleep. 
And the dark's musky with the grapes. Well, 

then, 
I saw her. I swear I saw her. Here. Today. 
She went before me idling and alone. 
None else in all the street, and as she went 
She danced a whiter moment with herself. 
Spin of a green skirt, slide of a white shoe. 
Regina herself as when I knew her first. 

II 

October. Halloween, no doubt of that. 
Crossing suburban uplands of the beach 
From Georgia's house, I found a lady's glove 
Fallen upon the path. My fancy again. 
Of course; what followed color all; but . . . 
well, 



Lady Greensleeves 69 

'Twas charming in my hands, the long white 

glove. 
'Twas yet a hollow sheath that held the shape 
Of some young arm, the mold of some young 

hand. 
The sweet thing like a relaxation hung, 
Like a caress, across my hands. Oh, say it: 
The stone-gray beeches and blue-branching 

shadows, 
And slopes of tawny leaf and ancient green, 
Remembered, and the blue of the brook, what 

glove 
Was kept and cousined by their violets once. . . 

Forthwith I turned upon my steps, I found 
The glimmer I had passed, and took the two 
Long-stemmed autumnal violets, why not? 
And thereupon I met herself, green sleeves 
And silver furs, the lady of the glove. 

I think the girl divined from my first glance, 
Of such sheer wonder and incredulous joy, 
Delight's long momentary breathlessness, 
Divined some recognition not her own. 
Ah, but Regina was never quite so young. 
Her eyes never so gentle and so wild. 
Yes, and her throat, that naked in white furs 



70 Our Dancing Days 

Laughed with her own voice, had quite other 

words, 
Oh, the old voice whose breath was plangent 

flutes ! 
'Twas perfect, wonderful ; her every move 
Kept my heart racing ; yet this wonder stood 
Apart from me, a stranger to my dream, 
A little alarmed, no doubt, of just my eyes ; 
Taller a trifle, younger most of all, 
The full reincarnation of my love . . . 
She took the glove, she took the violets. 
She did not know me. Lethe was between. 



Ill 

November. Silver four-o'clock on Broad. 
''Who's that nice girl?" Virginia said: and I 
Made truthful answer: " Greensleeves. I don't 
know." 

I think, I am sure, Virginia saw no likeness. 

Both my sisters have refused with scorn 

The likeness. But that's later. Too much 

scorn. 
Well, but I'm with them. It was that nice girl 
Who passed us, and no other. Velvet capped, 



Lady Greensleeves 71 

And drifted to her ears in milkwhite furs, 
Her cold green velvets lifted, lustrous, half 
Aflame with sky, and full of little flames 
The milkwhite shoes laced almost to her knees. 
How does a woman judge? Of course. By 

clothes. 
I did not need it, I was glad of it, 
Virgina's word. The nice girl spoke to me. 
She came how faintly smiling, faintly flushed, 
Into a wind that only blew on her ; 
I know her hair was stirred to wanton mists, 
I know the green skirts tied and trapped her 

knees ; 
And yet she did not hate it, not my eyes. 
So gently and intently came her own, 
Eyes of such limpid light and loveliness . . . 

Good lord, am I to valentine again? 

I'll have Regina back again, I'll kill 

False dream with brutal fact. Why should I, 

though ? 
'Twas neither dream nor false that she who 

passed, 
And clustered with the delicate pale day 
So went like eyes, went blindly with her own. 
Why will you hurt me with your beauty, child? 



72 Our Dancing Days 

IV 

November. Over the twilight cliffs of High, 
Fair skies, and all the faces flocked on me 
Like happiness. Most like were three young 

girls 
That passed with sunset on their lips, a gay 
Salute of three at once : the middle grace 
Who but my Lady Greensleeves? Passed me by, 
And left me in a swift and curious heat 
Naming the others. Newly rich. Not good. . . 

Well, the adventure. There was plot in it. 

Out of the nothing one could build a tal?. 

I missed a beat of heart, the same she missed 

That held half -turned her glance in such arrest ; 

Then in the lash-full luster of her eyes 

My own had time to run to her mates and come 

Back to the lashes and the light again, 

And take their luster last ; there was a thing 

To happen in due order in the large 

Space of an instant. Ballad of her eyes. 

Let go, they waited to be caught again. 

They were the fresh high color of the sky. 

They took one in so softly one became 

A star, and melted. Twice a fool ? Why not ? 



Lady Greensleeves 73 

They were dew on fever. Why not, if the 

crown 
Of folly is the fear of being a fool? 

I heard the others as they came and passed 
Babble Greensleeves her name. It's Moira, yes. 

V 

December. But it seems an April night. 
I stood with Hampton waiting at the doors 
My sisters, in the audience thronging out 
Gay with the comedy we did not hear. 
I breathed a waft of fragrance, I looked down 
A lady 's very breast into her flowers, 
Orchids, flame and snow. Greensleeves herself. 
With a lad for lover, Greensleeves. Jealous, I? 
Not jealous. But an instant rage was mine, 
I could have made her so much happier ! 
Surprised that Hampton knew her too, I asked : 
I had met her, yes: who was she? Money, he 

said. 
But give it time, 'twould open any doors. 
Irish. O'Hara. Except maybe our own. 
She 'd smile 'm open if 'twas only she. 

And can one weigh her smiles? It can be done. 
I know 'twas planned, the way she saw him 
first; 



74 Our Dancing Days 

Her greeting to my fellow was clear and bright, 
Decided sweetness in the moment's nod; 
Then, in the wing of a half -moment, — homed ! — ■ 
The quick glance rested and relaxed, she gave 

me 
Her gay and conscious self without reserve 
In the smile that kept its kiss, the eyes that had 
The happy helpless little falter in them. 
We met as if in some sure after-life 
With eyes that wondered backward, crying 

each: 
What, is it true we two once lived apart? 
Or did we dream it? Just to meet was haven, 
Was repite in a jewel shut secure. 
Lady, what do you ask of me? No more 
Than not to miss the moments when they come ? 
Moira O'Hara. Well, that's pretty enough. 

VI 

December. In the foreign news today 
I read high scandal : Madame Quelquechose, 
Not two months married, sueing for divorce. 
Regina. But there may be snow in France. 

A Sunday afternoon, like spring : this year 
The Christmas will be green : the russet lawns 



Lady Greensleeves 75 

Unlaced the elm-shadows starred with gold 

today 
Of winter dandelions. New squares of city, 
I sought a house not there : and one more house, 
I turned upon the steps to hear my name 
Called, and to meet her from the carriage-way 
Coming, newly alighted from a drive. 
My Lady Greensleeves at her very door. 

The ballad put to touch, her hand in mine. 
And the old song new music. Hue and cry, 
Lost in open Broad Street, Mr. Lee ! 
Ah, but I sought the House of Happiness, 
And begged of Miss O'Hara : was it here? 
Alas, this was the wicked witch's house. 
And who knocked here was never seen again ! 
And I made cheerful and contented vow 
I wanted to be lost, to be bewitched, 
I came to see her, if she would let me in. 

But first, to prove the witchcraft was indeed 
Real, and foretold my coming, I must see 
Her garden ; not the late chrysanthemums. 
Her colors, but the bold bare apple-tree 
Green-stockinged too in sunlight: 'twas in 

bloom. 
Like a stag 's antlers tipped with roses, yes. 



76 Our Dancing Days 

But no such magic as her breast by now 
Bare, and the white fledge slipping to her hands, 
No such magic as her head by now 
Uncovered, up to a richer wreath than time's. 



vn 



Midnight, and long midnight. The New Year. 

And all the horns of all the city drone 

A monotone so myriad and immense 

It seems more old than man ; to hear is like 

A strange half-pleasant nightmare, dreams of 

death 
And the end of time ; when all may yet be well 
If one can find one's friends, one's self, before 
The horns blow out. 

Terry O'Hara's child. 

I might have guessed it. I could laugh at it. 
In Collegetown, in Terry's Place, of old, 
Every one of us, the sons of song, 
Every roistering clinker of the stein. 
At one time or another heard him swear 
In oaths most interesting, his girl should have 
A chance. He'd give the business up, by God. 
Blow, horns, tonight I met him in his house. 



Lady Greensleeves 77 

The old brute was mute, and, going before 

ourselves. 
Winked but the once. Then when I held her 

furs 
To sleeve my lustrious lady in, and take 
The clear half-smiling profile, like old coins, 
Across her shoulder, stamped upon my heart. 
That was across her shoulder too, the wink. 
For old sake's sake. For a new elbows-up. 
To notice in the green and gloating lamps 
How did the subtle insinuating curves 
Slide, a voluptuous deprecation, down 
Into her flat round back, and not to miss 
What dimples and caresses in mid-play 
Adorably vanished, and the sudden stroke 
Of shadow deep between her shoulderblades 
That left no stain upon her. Blow, horns, blow. 

VIII 

Saint Valentine. No Valentine from me ? 

My lady in the wonderful gold gow^n 

That danced tonight with me? The Assembly 

Ball 
Its Princess. Even my sisters take the vow. 

Alas, my love, you do me wrong 
To cast me off discourteously 



78 Our Dancing Days 

The green sleeves you have worn so long, 
The green sleeves were a gift from me. 

But money could not get her those clear arms. 
Much money not her gesture when she took 
At half -arm's length the chain and let it fall. 
And that was genius, how she wore the rose. 

And oh, White-Shoulders, must we part? 
And richer in rich tiffany. 
Why have you taken me my heart 
And pinned the crimson at your knee ? 

It's an old wonder: she's aristocrat 

By nature, as of finest blood and breed, 

The portrait of a lady. How she sprang 

So perfect, out of such a stock. . . Well, well. 

Cophetua met her on the green, 
And sware a right king's-oath between, 
By God this beggar should be queen, 
And who but Lady Greensleeves? 

Another ballad, now the sleeves are off. 
How once there was a man that loved above 
His fortune, and his love deserted him. 
And loving then below his — fortune, what ? 



Lady Greensleeves 79 

IX 

Good Friday. Home from the East. The old 

home now. 
And now that Georgia has her boy, my name, 
A Hampton and a Lee, and by as much 
Virginia, she will never marry now, 
Is blossomed into an Aunt, I'm free, I'm off. 
It's curious therefore now to take again 
This journal. Curious too, it's not quite done. 
Fifth Avenue is by a lady . . . well, 
Distinctly gaj'er, Kegina. The return. 
I saw her at Pagliacci, play in play, 
And yet within ; her glance came quick to me ; 
Her box was empty when the curtain fell. 

Well, will it snow again? It's cold enough. 
The valley's rich cold greens and violets 
Were crisply wrought and stayed in driving 

glooms 
When from my train I looked and named it, 

home. 
Ohio orchards, now at prime of bloom. 
What chill and kindred echoes in the rain 
Of that cold sky. And here, from street to 

street, 



80 Our Dancing Days 

Cold wafts of fragrance, how the lilacs bowed. 
And billowed, wind's work, burst to purple 
foam. . . 

Damn it, she looked like Greensleeves, she 

looked like 
Greensleeves. 'Twas hellish, 'twas a witch's 

dance. 
Ah, Greensleeves, shall we ever dance again, 
Greensleeves unsleeved, and in the gold not 

mine? 
In gold not mine, her arms and shoulders, look. 
Are far more precious fabric, and her breast : 
And like a purple lilac love 's own face 
Struck in the middle of her breast, struck deep 
And vanished, the one shadow near her heart. 
That was the fear I might ask even yet : 
"Would she drop everything? . . A fool and 

cruel. 
A fool and cruel. One can't drop everything. 



Easter, what an Easter ! Snow, what snow ! 
And all the greensleeves, all the greensleeved 

trees 
Were silvered over with a blow of flutes, 



Lady Greensleeves 81 

Shrieked over with excessive sweetness, shot 
With chills and ecstasies of white alarm ; 
Only the pines stood up ; but under each, 
Itself a fountain of the gushing white, 
A circle was pure Eden. And the lilacs. 
Bowed head to knee, white curve on curve of 

snow, 
How darkly in the eclipse the lilacs glanced 
And glimmered, with the swim of violet eyes 
That could not hide them even in the veil, 
Of violet eyes self-startled that w^ere gray. 
And I am he that cried to dream again. 
Once in a lifetime is a wonder. Twice ? 



The pretty letters, oh, the pretty liars 

That end with the gay ''Greensleeves," they 

are naught. 
That little laughing backward tilt of head. 
Together with her lift of arms, was like 
Her very kiss. For perfectly I know 
How she would give her lips, and how her 

breast. 
It w^as as if it had been, long ago. 
We almost spoke of how our children slept 
While we were dancing, virgin each of each. . . 



82 Our Dancing Days 

Snow on the lilacs, of such stuff are we. 
I had sent no word; she would not be at home 
On such an Easter morning; at her doors 
I said to that old hypocrite my heart, 
None understands her quite as well as I, 
Wherever her love may go, as go it may, 
And she will never quite be what she might. 
Snow on the lilacs, yes. But sleeves are good 
After Easter. Lord, but who said that? 

XI 
"The other things are nothing," Moira said. 
''Tell me of her, the girl you loved. The girl 
I'm like. The girl you love again in me." 

I breathed so deep a wonder that I laughed 
''She's dead," I said "and he that loved her, 

dead. 
There's no one but your lover left alive." 

"She must have been most lovely." Lightly 

then 
She caught her hands to her cheeks, her eyes, 

she cried: 
"Don't say like me ! What is it, my long throat 
With my heart in it ? No, no, if 'twas hers. 
M^ tell-tale eyes ? ' ' She turned away with this. 



Lady Greensleeves 83 

In all her vivid sweetness was a pang, 
A plangence ; that fire-melting flash of eyes, 
Yes, and the fever of beauty that so burned 
On her tight lips, impeached her ; and her voice. 
''And snow, snow on my heart, is that hers 
too?" 

I came to her at the window. Morning yet 
Was flash on flash of snow beneath green trees; 
And from deep green the dulcet fall of white 
Caught down and tricked our eyes; without a 

wind, 
Large as white roses, like the vanishing 
Of meteors. They that lived till sunset, how 
They would forget the morning's wickedness, 
Would see in her wet apple-blossoms April 
Smiling, her penance done. The white sighs fell. 
The ghostly roses. "Do you love me?" I said. 

She laughed a little. ''I knew you would come" 

she said 
* * This morning. ' ' Suddenly sinking to the floor 
She kneeled before me, tight hands at her 

breast. 
And eyes imploring. ''Raleigh, no!" she said. 
"Since I must wrong you, thus I'll wrong you 

least. 



84 Our Dancing Days 

Poor Greensleeves. Lift her up. Kiss her 
goodbye.'' 

I jeered at her. *' Because your sleeves are 

green ? 
She is two white arms will never let me go. 
And you, stay on your wicked knees till then!" 

XII 

Oh, keep the date, the habit, end the book 
With one more page. I came away indeed 
Without a touch of her. In Georgia's house 
I found Virginia and herself struck cold 
Over the letter which they gave to me, 
Regina's letter. And I jeered at them. 
I wrote across the unopened envelope 
And sent to Moira. And I myself came out 
To the upland beeches and the afternoon 
Where now the northern shadows were last 
snow. 

But white is not my lady's favour. Look, 

The green that gemmed the snow was thick 

with faint 
Gold bells and rosy tapers, flowers I thought 
As white as snow. But snow's another thing. 



Lady Greensleeves 85 

Bloodroots, the green hands held me up their 
pearls 

Warm as a throat in cold white furs. White- 
hearts, 

They were like love's eyelids sleep can not un- 
flesh. 

Spring-beauties, they w^ere closed like kisses 
death 

Cannot uncrimson. But no violet yet. 

Hark, how my heart went leaping sudden and 

far, 
That was the first woodthrush. My heart went 

leaping, 
Once I mean I saw her before she knew. 
Greensleeves and silver furs, that nice young 

girl. 
Coming across to Georgia's, the bold thing. 
Coming across the green yet laced with white. 
She danced a whiter moment with herself. 
Spin of a green skirt, slide of a white shoe. 
And quickly as she checked, it was too late. 



The Lady's-Tresses 



The Lady 's-Tr esses 



I HAD meant to wait till moonliglit and re- 
turn 
To put my gay adventure to the proof ; 
But orchids always struck an hour for me, 
And now the hour; and these were rare and 

fine, 
Fresh little spires of April snow were they, 
And where the ferns were yellowing under the 

wood 
Looked lilies-of-the-valley in autumn's front. 
So 'twas not feigned, the excitement I called 

back 
To Emily waiting in the motor-car : 
' ' They 're lady 's-tresses ! ' ' 

''I'll come too!" she cried. 



But I was planning swiftly. *'No, it's wet," 
I said, "I'll bring them." Now I bent to them, 
The moment's scent unlinked like an embrace 



90 Our Dancing Days 

Once and again from me. The flowers them- 
selves 

Outlustered even the fond and pretty name ; 

Most artful, waxen white of ruffled bells 

Twined in the plait of green, and like her 
braids 

Fragrant of maidenhood. An exile far 

From its own April, a virginity 

That never hears the thrush. What truer sign 

And symbol could there be for tragic love? 

"Don't be all day !" cried Emily from the car. 

I laughed with quick abandon, and it seemed 
There was an echo in every waxen throat. 
Slower, you little shrieks. You wanton breath, 
Between the lips of what surprise are you? 
White thing, what's in your scent? White 
thing, what 's yours ? 

I was all but saying these pretty things when 

now 
I brought the lady's-tresses to the lady. 
And she that tapped away the yawn kept still 
Breath-parted lips, for rapture feigned and true 
Upon my orchids. "Oh," she said, "they're 

dear!" 



The Lady' s-Tr esses 91 

''Hands in your lap!" I held the flowers from 

her, 
''Smell first!" and made her lean out of the 

car. 
The white veil showered a silver round her face, 
Her eyes flashed through it, and to her breath 

it danced. 
And now 'twas crisply imprinted on her mouth. 
I kissed her through it. 

"George!" she gasped, "you wretch!" 
She tugged the levers. "You shall run for 
that!" 

And run I did, and climbing in I made 
The one excuse, and choicely said, I vow, 
The asking Emily would she marry me 
That made the car so widely swerve; and 

though 
I had grown so letter-perfect in my passion, 
I never should have said it half so well. 
So sweetly, lady 's tresses ! but for you. 

II 

The steady touring-car so widely swerved 
'Twas like a sudden giddiness of wings 
Falling ; but then like wings indeed, we went 



92 Our Dancing Days 

A glance *s speed, and the wind's buoyance, 
A smoke behind us and the sun before, 
All up the greenwoods and the goldenrod. 

Therefore 'twas not absurd, the thing she said 
So quaintly, with so soft a suUenness : 
* ' Oh, damn ! ' ' And in a running moment more, 
"George Cartaret!" she cried, "if you mean 

that, 
Wait, and be still, or I — I'll wreck the car! 



>> 



And I was silent, sober, in my heart 
No shadow of remorse, but one delight 
Of laughter, till I all but hugged myself. 
For life is better than the tales. I sat, 
But in a kindlier sympathy and amaze, 
With gods and fates, and laughed at life. 

touched 
Creation, lord of art, who proved by fact 
Our high imagination's prophecy. 
Not written after the event, but lived 
With sure foreknowledge, crafty piloting. 
Emily steered us, yes, but I her hands, 
And I more silken than her silken foot. 
And I had said enough, I need not act 
One inch beyond the proud and confident 
Waiting her answer, sure to be pure gold, 



The Lady* s-Tr esses 93 

Stamped with the coin of my own fancy, and 

yet 
Free will, her own. Who ever waited thus 
His sure refusal from a pretty girl? 

Carriage or coach or motor-car, they're not 

Good places for proposals, no ; unless 

One knows the answer, as I knew ; because 

If one should be unfortunate there's yet 

The remnant of the journey. Unless, once more, 

It is one's joy, as it was mine, to be 

Unfortunate, unless one loves as I 

The profile of rejection in the veil 

Beside him, and the veil so bitten in. 

Loved surely, oh you half -averted cheek, 

Securely, oh you lips and eyes like flowers 

Recovering from the wind that as winds will 

Visited j^ou too gaily ! If I wished 

At all, if I had any wish beyond, 

I wished the way was longer, and the day. 

The way, the day, were fair enough themselves 
For any man 's devotion. And when now, 
By historied beeches and the bridge of sighs 
Over the brook, unto our journey's end, 
The tents upon the riverside, we came, 



94 Our Deincing Days 

Where Nan the child came dancing out to meet 

us, 
And Nan the mother, — ^well, I stepped to earth 
Sighing content, and almost sighed regret 
To take the splendid fiction up again. 
But when I turned to Emily, Emily sat 
With both hands lifting from her face the veil, 
One rose to the clear falter of her eyes. 

''Yes, George," said Emily Saint, ''111 marry 
you." 

Ill 

'Twas Benbow and Duquesne and I that made 
This great conspiracy. Oh, the word was true. 
Emily wore no ring, that craft was hers. 
Emily took me driving for I asked 
To visit her that evening. 'Twas all straight. 
Alice Duquesne had brought the secret word 
That three days later Emily would announce 
Not only her betrothal but her day 
Of marriage, near and strange as was the man : 
Martin St. John. Saint added unto Saint! 
And forthwith we conspired. That very night, 
The night of Friday, this was Saturday, 
Benbow, no better actor, chosen by lot, 



The Lady*s-Tresses 95 

Proposed, and was rejected, and went off 
To the devil, as he swore. He came to me. 
They were old friends : Emily wept : he raged. 
Mine was the second turn: and Benbow said: 
''But she deserves it, taking you to drive 
When she 's as good as married. Most immoral. 
You'll take your heartbreak quiet like a man. 
Wonder what's left Duquesne for Sunday 

night ! 
Be sure and tell me." One thing only stays 
In darkness : how the chapter of St. John 
Eeally read, I shall not ever know. 
I think indeed 'twas I that closed the book. 

Small boast in that. In the innocence of my 

heart, 
In my unfeigned appreciation, yet 
My hand was out to Emily of the faint 
The flushed half-smiling fright, the blind wide 

eyes. 
And desperate quick hands that at her veil 
Strove to be still, where in the car she sat 
With knees bent sharply and feet together 

tight. 
''Yes, George, I'll marry you." That's what 

she said. 
And out she came, and catching up my hand 



96 Our Dancing Days 

She tugged me away to meet them like the two 
That so came dancing: and ''Hello!" she sang, 
"Nanny! Nan! You fairies of the wood!" 
Thank God that women kiss with both their 
hands. 

Thank God they talk. I grew religious, yes. 
And there was much to talk of and to see : 
That quaint and rustic household, tent by tent, 
Where Johnny Mahan had made his summer 

nest, 
The tents that were such blind bright hearts of 

cloud 
Inviting sleep, the faggots on the hearth 
That promised to our faces dreams by night. 
The titmouse on the guy-rope, all that so 
Had weathered sun and shower, and gave them 

back. 
Mother and child, their health: these we sur- 
veyed 
All in a babble like the brook's talk, out 
To the river, and now back to where we stayed 
Safely together, safe yet, where the brook 
Down upper ledges sounded and flashed white 
Above the waterfall, the waterfall 
Draped on the cliff below us. Hear it? Yes. 
George Cartaret betrothed to Emily Saint. 



The Lady's-Tresses 97 

IV 

The joke was on me, if it was a joke. 
Nevertheless, I may say this at once, 
I could not keep my moment's sharp suspect 
That Emily knew our precious plot, or guessed, 
And turned the tables. No. The plot was safe. 
Alice Duquesne had never failed us yet. 
And Emily knew just nothing of herself, 
And of herself guessed all things, chiefly love. 

Oh, I was fond of her, as we were all, 

I had my own proprietorship and pride 

In her, no doubt of that; gay and assured, 

A beauty known, an empty curly head, 

And dimples at their rakish hide and seek, 

Somehow her beauty mattered not a bit 

To anybody ; nor her coquetry, 

'Twas so transparent, so unprejudiced; 

Emily Saint that went on dancing feet 

"Whither she would, or whither she would not 

Went, what did it matter, so she danced ? 



But what burned up suspicion was no guess 
No plot, no peradventure. That new fire. 
The clear faint vivid carmine that suffused 



98 Our Dancing Days 

Her cheeks whose wont was pallor and smooth 

light, 
Damn it, that rose was mine, that was for me. 

There was a thing for courage. I to wed? 
Oh, sometime, doubtless, maybe. I found an 

odd 
Conviction in me : there were many girls, 
Girls I had known, girls I should never know, 
That had enough humanity to match 
And mate my own. Put by the question, then. 
Of what's called character; for I myself 
Had little as yet, as this adventure proved; 
The question was of choice, to choose to love. 
Well then, a thrown flower out of nowhere. 

Look. 



Sighing surrender without glance, be sure 
She knew my eyes took airy rape of her. 
But woman wear more braver masks than men. 
And it was maybe far more true of her 
That I could feign or fancy, that she made 
A joy of it all, a luxury of still fear, 
Godiva galloping straight and fast to me 
Naked upon her beat of heart, and yet 
All but asleep with safety as she came. 



The Lady* s-Tr esses 99 

Oh, but this child and fairy in the round 
High-girdled pearl and blue that from her 

breast 
Hung hardly farther than her knees, was she 
Indeed a woman? Arch ol brows and pout 
Of conscious lips, she held her profile thus ; 
To the play of her shoulders, affectations light 
And dainty : what a valentine, just saved 
From sugared sentiment by that pert nose, 
By that full chin, beneath her hair : was she 
My lady and love? The lady's tresses, yes: 
Upclustered and obedient wild hair. 
Most rich of inner artful whisks and eddies, 
Dull gold, and all elf-shivers, little shrieks 
Of sweetness, crowning her smooth temples 

with 
A play at savage. Love? Did she love me? 



We babbled with the brook, old things, far off. 
How Johnny driving out at six would bring 
Alice Duquesne. The wretch. For audience, 

yes. 
Martin St. John was coming too. And that. 
That was a smile, how waiting and prepared, 
That dimpled into amber full beneath 



100 Our Dancing Days 

Her arcli and innocence of brows, one hand 
Outspread, without a ring, upon her breast. 

I did begin to love her then and there. 
Against the upper brook's cascades, the slope 
Of lilies that so kept their woven place 
But fleeting, beating, shuddering, and looked 
The sudden cloud's descending from the blue, 
She crouched upon one foot with one foot free, 
She coiled with one hand up behind her neck. 
You know her, Emily Saint. She 's light, light. 
She's slight, slight. A waist like Ariel's world. 
Yet that forgotten and eye-snatching leg 
Bloomed to a sumptuous fullness, and the breast 
Her hand could not keep down. She's sweet, 
sweet. 

Forsworn for me, that settled me St. John. 
But Alice, she would look with no such eyes. 
Alice must be outplayed. Event's the thing. 
For now, no prettier thing could be, the child 
Was stripped and bathing, pure delight to 

watch, 
And Nan that waded with her was as fine, 
Bare knees midway the pool that linked the 

falls, 
A hand to Nanny : what could warm one 's heart 



The Lady's-Tresses 101 

More, of the rapt Madonnas? Like an elf 
Was Nanny, and slipped the shadow of leaves 

from her, 
Slim little back and flute-note arms and legs, 
And spilled to a mist the perfect joy she was. 

Emily kicked a slipper free, and whisked 
The long blue stocking from a brilliant foot. 
But I took quick command. Up to the tents. 
Our hostess crying instructions after us, 
And Emily limping on one foot, we ran, 
And she into that tent, and I in this. 
Not in the river, no, the waterfall. 
Sport royal ! I laughed unto myself, while now 
I stretched me into Johnny's bathing-suit 
Exultant: Alice and all should be outplayed: 
And out on high air met her from the tent. 

And Emily, straight into my eyes she came 
Bare-figured, empty-armed, and so let go 
In the little black-silk bathing-suit I knew 
What languor loosed her knees, and why her 

paired 
And pretty pacing flagged, and how she was 

held 
Up by my eyes ; and if that smile had been 
Longer, only a moment longer, well, 



102 Our Dancing Days 

She would have swooned and fallen face up to 

me 
Still smiling. But we laughed, but we caught 

hands, 
And down by a ladder of roots and steps of 

rock 
"We climbed still laughing under the waterfall. 

VI 

Then first, when stroke for stroke she followed, 

round 
The sounding pool, I hated that the two 
Must bring their toilets out to oversee us. 
Crowding and calling on the brinks above. 
If I assumed the penalties, I took too 
The privileges. Why, so, I climbed the rocks 
Into the fall itself, and so leaned out 
To catch her hand, the naiad : Emily, 
She came, she screamed, she was beaten to my 

hands. 
She clutched me and she crouched beside me, 

full 
In the fall of water. Two in the waterfall ! 

Who knows that rapture? Well for him who 

knows. 
The silver ache, the flashing water-weight 



The Lady*s-Tresses 103 

That shocked and pounded, pushed and pressed 

and played 
Heavy upon us, driving out of us 
All fret and fever, and leaving bloom, clear 

blood 
Singing from vein to vein like rosy far 
Lightnings in long neutral twilight. Well 
For him who knows it, well for him who dares. 
The multitudinous seizing shattering clash 
Drowned every sense in us but being glad ; 
And the water's cold strong wring of hands re- 
shaped 
To the good bones our bodies ; 'twas a new 
Modelling and creation, casting out 
Of devils; as the clay the potter's hand 
We took the brook. Two in the waterfall ! 

''Lean back!" I shrieked. And backs against 

the wall. 
And on our knees the drums of riot, the harps 
Of clamor, we had room to laugh, we looked 
Through sliding panels of clear hyaline 
To see the sunlit well of golden cliffs 
Dance with a drunken clearness, and the two 
That hung above us how on the sudden changed 
Into the maddest phantoms, leap on leap. 



104 Our Dancing Days 

So may they dance who are shut out of heaven. 
The first kiss. Ah, but thrice expert of that 
Cold sweetness was the wet-faced nymph than I, 
She that of one so made a three-times-three ! 

Then she was out and in the pool again, 
And following, after a slide and glide into 
Gloom-lighted underwater soft and still, 
I turned and lay beside her, poised afloat. 
Face up beneath the grotto's open dome. 
Clouds blanched across the blue; remote and 

rich 
The beech-tops waved; the cavern of cool rock 
Jutted a ponderous purple gloom on us. 
And fountained its paired silver columns out 
And down to us, with scattering pearls that 

dropped 
From tresses of pure luster ; falling, fallen, 
And yet to fall, forever now and now, 
Down, and deep down, and kissing-deep, my 

veins. 

It seemed a voice in dreams, but it was Nan 
That made her mandate heard above the falls. 
"Come out, you mad things! Dinner! Half 
an hour ! ' ' 



The Lady*s-Tresses 105 

VII 

But when I issued from the tent, reclothed, 
Remade, and let alone into the high 
And smiling contemplation of the gods, 
Once more the human comedy returned 
Upon me, the relentless jocund fact 
Shocked home in me as instant as at first. 
The maid was at the kitchen-tent, and waved 
A cheerful spoon toward Emily, perched in view 
Down by the brook: Miss Saint she dried her 

hair. 
And Mrs. Mahan and Nanny they was gone 
Out to the road to meet the company : 
They'd ought to be here now. Indeed they'd 

ought. 

What most was in my mind was what should be 
My answer to her question : when did I 
Begin to love her? That, I was assured, 
Was always the first topic of the engaged. 
I brought it with me, dropping to the shade. 
And putting now the slope of upper falls, 
The dancing sounding snowdrift in green 

gloom 
That had the sun-flash only along the top, 
Behind me, facing resolute where she sat, 



106 Our Dancing Days 

Emily, on the sudden-ceasing brink, 
Drying her hair. I stood and looked at her 
Before she heard or saw me. When? Why, now, 
If first love is as strange and wierd as death. 

Rebloomed, in new ungirlded disarray; 
The gray kimono's golden dragon twined 
A gorgeous agony about her, caught 
Between her knees, and mixing with her hairj 
Relaxed, relapsed, she sat, upon her feet, 
And folded limb on limb and knee to breast. 
Conjured and instant, well, she made me think 
Of what I know not immemorial nudes 
By old immortal watersides. I saw 
The glimpses of a new-moon throat and face 
Up to the sky, a head thrown back to shake 
The rich smooth blindfold smother free of her. 
Or now she bent full forward, face to lap, 
To let the shaken bright cascade of hair 
Flow over her head and hang like drapery, 
A pose without a parallel, I thought. 
The dragon flaming into ashen gold. 

What drapes were these, what masks, what 

gestures, what 
Disguises not the human that I knew, 



The Lady* s-Tr esses 107 

Allurement fainter than the thick sweet fear 
Of what we were and were not, she and I? 
Prone on the brink, stooped in the sun, she 

looked 
Deserted, widowed, some enchantress slipped 
Out of Theocritus, dreadful and sweet, 
At her enticing, her abhorrent rites; 
Mourning and wronged and lone, thus crouched 

and draped 
And run to gold, thus cowled in heavy hair. 
The sack and smoothly-hooded eyeless glow 
Of dead inhuman gold drawn over her. . . . 
My eyes grew hot, the heart sank out of me, 
I made one leap of it all down the rocks. 

VIII 

She flashed me sudden sweetness as she turned. 
The saintly-slendered face uplift, the new 
Moon in the gold; and on the curving ledge 
She made me room, she leaned against me, half 
Scarfed with the fragrance and the silken touch 
Of tresses ; where I smoked, and we were still. 

Sun on the glowing trees and bold cliff brows. 
The cove's white walls were mirrored bright, 

beyond. 
In the outlet to the river, silver cliffs 



108 Our Dancing Days 

Broken to dapples of rich sun, with carved 
Sun-crusted juts of masonry antique, 
And ivied with wild vine. And in the shadow 
Under the arch beneath the fall were ferns 
Hung like fresh garlands from our own wet 

brows, 
I had not noticed them, from our old selves. 
But we had passed the veil, the waterfall. 

Profiles of jetting silver at the brink 
Glittered, and left the sun ; silver and blue 
It fell, and in the cold of jewelled strands 
Hung, in a dropping shimmer and staying slide, 
The tall slim delicate presence in the shade 
Whose feet were milkwhite dancing on our 

hearts. 
For I, wherever I looked, saw womanhood. 
And all that fire-crowned fall of shaken snow 
That swiftly fleeting slipped to opener curves 
And instantaneous broideries, well, it seemed 
The nymph's hair dancing lock on lock, that fell 
No farther than her knees, and spilled the white 
Lilies upon her feet. 'Twas life that danced : 
The passing continuity, the fall 
Remaining, like seen music, now and now 
Immortal moments ours; and music heard, 



The Lady's-Tresses 109 

I take that music in my blood again, 

It echoed round from cliff to cliff till all 

Was one full cup of monotoning song. 



When then at last I broke our long content, 
'Twas sudden even to me. I laughed, I said : 
^'G^ood lord, where are our lady's-tresses, lost? 
I laid them in your lap. But perish flowers. 
Perish all flowers but the flowerlike hair 
Now in your lap." I touched the silken flow 
That now no more than trembled its gold gleams 
And flicked its pointed tongues. "You know," 

I said, 
'' Twas inconsiderate of you to perch 
Here in full sight of camp, and so defer 
A lover's most unquestioned privilege. 
I wish, you know, to kiss you in your hair. ' ' 

She had a tightening little thrust of lips. 
She had a sudden deep delicious cleft 
Of shadow vanishing from her smooth cheek ; 
The bands of rich hair narrowing her face. 
Spread out on her white arms, fell back again 
Dull to her eyes ; forthwith she set her hands 
To braid the glory in. "My dear," she said, 
"A w^oman's oldest privilege comes first. 



1 1 Our Dancing Days 

It's joy enough to know it might have been, 
Isn't it, George my lover? Oh, but tell 
Alan Duquesne he need not follow suit. 
I've changed my mind. I will not marry you. 



ii 



Two Notes and The Rechase 



Two Notes and The Rechase 



44T3UT IF I were set here in the wood, and 

he 

On high Tintagil yonder, if I had 
Long Failnaught bended, with a tough tight 

string, 
And with a shaft of a right rounded nock, 
And gray-goose feathers fastened with green 

silk, 
And the arrow head of steel, an inch across, 
And of a green-blue temper, that would draw 
Blood of a weathercock, if I were set 
My foot to a ferntuft and the oak behind. 
And at my right the sun, and at my back 
The wind, and on the footpath hard beside 
Isolt, then would I shoot him such a shot. 
So strong and sweet, so smooth and so long- 
drawn, 
The tower should yet be murmuring ' Tristram ^s 

Harp!' 
Long after Mark had fallen into the sea.'' 



1 1 4 Our Dancing Days 

This much if I remember of the lost 
Poem, it's of the other, of the wrong 
Isolt ; never of Gyp ; 'twas my own fault 
That so must tell my tale to such a chance 
Acquaintance, such an understudy, this 
Nina Farrell. The arrow should be green, 
Green tipped with blue. The blue closed gen- 
tian, yes; 
The flowers that never open from the bud; 
They were like what tapers of the deep mid- 
night. 
They were stripped and smooth like lamp- 
flames ; jewel-blue. 
An ecstasy of blue, how pure and cold, 
A bitter virgin blue. For these were now 
In this girl's lap, where at the silent door 
We guested, in the gray benched vacant porch, 
With none to hear but absence at the pane. 
And by the cold hearth memory, there midway 
The dead deserted village by Pine Lake. 

Crafty and conscious, yes, a jester's mask, 
A push of lips, and under high-arched brows 
The droop of eyelids maybe overfull. 
As after sleep or weeping, for such eyes. 
So narrowed, such new-moons of mirth or mus- 
ing; 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 1 5 

Now with the tale she yawned, she tapped her 

mouth 
With a blue pointed gentian, but her eyes 
Glittered excitement even while she stretched, 
Bare elbows up and hands behind her neck; 
And so curved forward, so full blown, her body 
Leaped into bold expression, flashed on me 
The sudden thick white double throb of breast 
Within the slipping veils : Isolt, Isolt, 
She of the full cups given without hands, 
The cup of love was one, and one was death. 

2 

*'0h, let's invent," she said, ''new episodes! 
Couldn't we pry a window, force a lock? 
And build a fire on one of these old hearths?" 

''A hatful of the wild red raspberries. 

A pickerel, I've a line, out of the lake. 

We'll do it!" I caught her hand, both hands, 

to me. 
''It has been done before, this very house." 

Yielding, full w^eight, she let herself be drawn 
Up to her feet, a rich reluctance, sighing: 
"It's all been done before." And then: "By 
you?" 



1 1 6 Our Dancing Days 

**No, I was fishing, half the night alone, 

One night last year,'' I said: "in the upper lake 

Where all the dead pines are. We'll row across. 

I came at midnight through the dark, the dew, 

And found one window lighted and alive. 

Oh, I looked in. This window and this room." 

By now we were at the window, hands to brows. 
"I'd love" she sighed, "to be a village ghost. 
Two lovers? Tell me what the girl was like." 

" 'Twas I that played the ghost," I sighed in 

turn : 
"Good lord, if they had seen me at the pane ! 
'Twas pretty as a ballad, how the two 
Sat in the naked room on the bare floor. 
And watched the fire, and the fire danced and 

danced. 
The boy's face burned. The girl was back to 



"The girl burned more," she breathed upon the 

pane. 
"We'll blind the window with a petticoat. 
And toast the last marshmallows. Well, your 

boat." 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 1 7 

She pinned her hat across my coat, and these 
We left for notice that the house was taken, 
But gathered up her flowers ; and out we came 
To the old town well, the chain and windlass yet 
Unbroken, where we drank, and to the stile, 
Bare steps that nothing crossed and nowhere 

led, 
Where now atop we lingered, looking back 
About the village, market-place of ghosts. 
Gray roofs and russet gables in the sun 
Midway the unaging mountain-valley, set 
In old idyllic meadows, ever green 
And ever narrower to the encroaching wood ; 
And so through goldenrod and gentian crossed 
To the aldered lakeshore, where I found and 

launched 
The secret boat ; and all the while we built 
A ballad, how indeed it might be done, 
How two might live a season out of time, 
By shifts and makeshifts, modern stratagems, 
Old woodcraft, in the house of the benched 

porch. 

"But we must have a happy ending, not 
Like theirs," I said, "that played too much the 
ghost, 



1 1 8 Our Dancing Days 

The two last year." With which I picked her 

up 
Suddenly, and so carried ankle-deep, 
For there was no clear landing, to the boat. 
And she rode gay, an arm about my neck, 
Kicking a white foot to the tune she hummed. 
That was the ''Whir, let fly!" the falconer's 

song. 
''They died of it," I finished on the oars. 



Play too persistent, for a moment yet 
The oars were heavy, all the air was thick 
With fragrance of red-russet : wierd enough. 
The lake was ever wierd: whose mountains 

round. 
Deep-domed, autumnal, velvet-forested, 
And their twice-limpid mirror, wore a mask 
Of strangeness, where all up the clear canal. 
Rowing as if by gaunt dimantled piers. 
Between those bones and horns of wood as if 
Through courts of roofless columns, we came in ; 
Hundreds of gray pine-hulks, to right, to left, 
They caught the long last sunlight, purpled 

keen 
Against the darkling deeps of water and wood. 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 1 9 

**But that's a happy ending," said this girl. 

''No place for swimming free." I turned the 

bow 
Toward sunset; now she burned, as of herself. 
Rich on the ruin ; I crossed the oars, I told 
The story of what happened here last year, 
The story of the two I saw by night. 
The boy and the girl, that next had disappeared. 
*'I did not know them : yet it's strange," I said, 
**Even when the hue and cry ran round the 

lakes, 
I did not think of them: not till I heard 
How here on Pine their oars were found afloat, 
And their boat stranded. In its own calm time 
The lake that tells no tales gave up its dead. 
The boy a sunset earlier than the girl." 



She took the gentians from her lap, and 

strewed 
Wide on the water : and with her push of lips, 
''The widowed blue," she said, "the tragic 

buds, 
Fit flowers for them. How do you know of them 
That they were lovers and they meant to die?" 



120 Our Dancing Days 

''Lovers/' I scoffed, ''that is indeed a name 
We give a many fools. They played they were. 
It did not need a ghost to tell me that 
When I was at their window. And in her 

breast 
There was a ring, a diamond yet alive 
In her dead breast. That was his mother's 

ring. ' ' 

''Then who's to judge them?" Sunset-flushed 
she glanced. 

And "Oh," I ended, "he was all forsworn. 
The girl he was to marry came that day. 
Or was to come, the day they disappeared. 
Another girl and ring. It's all of small 
Romance, except for one thing, maybe, this: 
Was it he or she that overturned the boat?" 

4 

It is not in my mind that after this 
I spoke a word. She did the speaking now. 
And I quite other and quite breathless things. 
She reached both hands: "The oars," she said, 

"I'm cold." 
And we rowed the skiff together, face to face, 
My hands upon her hands upon the oars, 
Drawing her arms to me, or following them 



Two Notes and The Rechase 121 

Home to her breast: quaint progress, eddies 

wide. 
"Do all men wear their mothers' rings?" she 

said, 
Staying the stroke : well was it that I kept 
The oars out balanced : ''May I look at yours?" 
She took it from my hand, she mused upon it. 
''Initials, and the date. They must be dead. 
And they were lovers long ago." With which 
She leaned back, smiling strangely, hand to her 

breast. 
And fingers now outspread. The ring was gone. 
"Jimmy Usher and Nina Farrell," she said 
"We'll play it out, why not? the ballad-stuff. 
What would happen if I upset the boat? 
What would people say when we were found?" 

I grasped the truth so slowly, even now ! 

"Funny you didn't guess. I'm in that too. 
Your poem. Only, between the lines. The 

other." 
She panted sharply, suddenly stood up 
Reeling, and cried: "You're shipped with that 

one, that one, 
Jilted Isolt: look at her: in her hands," 
She held them wide, "the sunset red as flowers: 



122 Our Dancing Days 

Here's innocence for you, here's touch-me-not," 
She touched her eyes, her lips, and now her 

breast, 
''Here's virgin-bower," and now caught up her 

skirts, 
"Here's lady's-slipper for you, and lady's- 

smock. 
Oh, and your love-lies-bleeding. . ." Then she 

stood 
Still, and the circles ran, stood still, and saying 
''When did the fire leave the lake?" she sank 
Quietly down in the boat. The boat lay quiet. 
Then last "And here's closed gentian, I," she 

said. 

II 

1 

"The two notes and the rechase on the horn, 
The old hunt's-up you found for us or made, 
Man, are you deaf to that? The death of the 

stag. 
The voice of your ow^n gun on your own lake. 
If Ida and I can 't tempt you, here 's what shall. 
Listen, it happened only yesterday." 

Ida, that was of course his wife. Dick's wife. 
This was Dick Farquhar writing from the lake. 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 2 3 

''Yesterday early. I slipped into West Lake, 
And just within the alder-gates surprised 
Wild ducks, a flock of four. They flew long 

range, 
But with the good left barrel I knocked one 

down. 
Why, then, I spied another, out from shore. 
That did not fly. No mallard. A deer's head." 

I'm done with it, the hunting of the deer. 

''I paddled, man, I paddled like a fiend. 

Remembered in an agony how the gun 

Was charged with duck-shot, stopped and with 

mad hands 
Slipped buck-shot into the breech. It took an 

age, 
And yet the magic driftwood there that 

trailed 
The ripple was no more than half across. 
I stood, the trick you taught me, lunge on 

lunge. 
I threw the green canoe with every stroke 
Out of the water. Last, I snatched the gun. 
And sent the left choke-barrel — it holds its 

charge 



124 Our Dancing Days 

Far better than the smooth-bore right, you 

know, — 
Into the swimming head. The gray beast lay 
Out on the water kicking : and I slid 
Alongside, clutched a great warm velvet ear, 
Cut through the long soft furry throat, and 

drew 
The hind-legs over the bow to let him hang 
And bleed in the lake. A buck of three years 

old." 



He blows the very devil of a horn 

About it. Dick the married man. I'll write. 



"Go to, shall we not have right English fare 
Here in the greenwood, pasty of venison 
With ale of which I have good bottled store?" 

I'm done with it, but not by sentiment. 

'Twas boy, I've no remorse of that. And none 

Of what he does not mention, laws we broke 

Jack-lighting for the deer. But never dogs. 

Law or no law, we never played unfair. 

The joy of the light's the night and the canoe, 

When you slip in to a shore like other worlds, 



Two Notes and The Rechase 125 

And fiery eyes look at you, fiery eyes, 

And the stag wheels and whistles, and you 

shoot. 
That was a corking shot on Otter Lake. 
And once on Sacondoga. . . No, I'm done. 



2 
But we were thinking of another marriage, 
Not Dick's, when Dick and I went out by night 
The last time, on the night of Gyp's goodbye. 
For we were fresh from it, the other marriage. 

Far down the lake, the paddles dipped in stars, 
By Dick's one speech within the hour, I knew 
We thought of it, Bee's wedding, both of us: 
I with the stale contempt of all success 
They know who fail: and Dick as much, I 

thought. 
But Dick, I thought and think, saw only there, 
In that bright image of our loss, the bride. 
And I the bridesmaid. Two bold hunters, yes. 

"Damn you, Jimmy," was what he said, "I 

keep 
Seeing you two parading. Gyp and you. 
You spoil a man's last privilege, cursing fate." 



126 Our Dancing Days 

I did not answer. I kept seeing too. 
My rice was gone before the bride ; 'twas spent 
Between the bridesmaid's limpid shoulder- 
blades ; 
She turned the trick upon me at last, and I, 
I caught her fingers in my collar, tight 
Between shrugged shoulders and a back- 
dropped head, 
And led her captive round the dancing rooms. 
What, was someone married? Yes, I saw 
The white-hung chapel green with maidenhair 
And smilax, sounding to the Lohengrin, 
I saw the flower-children wavering come. 
The prettiest screwing Betty's mouth at me, 
With ferns and lilies-of-the-valley ; and then 
The bridesmaid's smile, the tragic fairy, Gyp. 

Brace up. That way lies madness. Try Dick's 

way. 
And then, the bride. Within her veil she 

looked. 
The white cloud under the orange-blossoms, like 
Undine within her fount ; the veil like death 
So paled her rich bold profile, and the rich 
Line of her mouth ; looked how apart, afar, 
Some famous beauty out of old romance. 
I heard no word between, I watched her turn 



Two Notes and The Rechase 127 

Back up the aisle, with that keen laughing boy- 
Tony her husband; now she went unveiled; 
Relaxed, loose-limbed, full motion, after tears, 
Alcestis up from death, or from the fire 
Guinevere. Oh, Miss Bridesmaid. We come 
next. 

''Light up," said Dick. ''We'll try the north 
shore first." 

3 

Well, I was sick of it. In all the stars 
That sparkled on the midnight lake, was one 
Where lust went hunting? That was earlier, 

stars. 
Stars and the wakes of stars, though now the 

wind 
Set all the black shores lapping long and loud. 
And now, the jacklight masted in the bow, 
Dick dipped a silent paddle, and in we crept, 
And all the lazy-heaving lily-pads 
Crept on us, taking light and wicked light, 
Where rustling loud as thunder we slipped 

through ; 
A wicked light, indecent to expose 
What tossing alders waved their glimmering 

blooms, 



128 Our Dancing Days 

And tossed them dark and darker into night. 
A wicked light, as Gyp became to me. 

No more of that. 'Twas done. That was today. 
This was the gun across my knees, tonight. 
Leaf -wavering was in her every move, 
Light languor poised and tense. No more, no 

more. 
How could she do it? Oh, I do not mean 
Refuse me, that's all right: I mean refuse 
With such a plot and play of cruelty, 
To make me ask and end it. "Why ? To smile 
That crimson close-lipped brilliant smile of 

hers? 
She smiled, there was a spot of carmine-pure 
In either cheek ; she smiled, her vivid lips 
A little tight upon the glittering teeth : 
"Jimmy," this kept her smiling, "Jimmy dear, 
It's you that I can't marry, you yourself." 

At least I pulled myself together then. 
I had heart enough to bless her anyhow. 
But if her no was unexpected, lord. 
What shall I call the storm that fell on me? 
When she came flying and caught me at the 
door, 



Two Notes and The Rechase 129 

Clasped me, and hung upon me, and took my 

breath 
With such wild weeping fury of kiss on kiss. . . 

Oh, hell. And nothing in all night to kill. 
Is it my fault that women make of me 
Their fool and eunuch? Sure, it must be mine. 
Correct it then. Amend it. By the gods, 
I've held two women in my arms at least, 
Gyp that would not marry me for all 
Her kisses, and another, well, that would 
For all her lack of kisses, Nina Farrell, 

' ' Cut it ! " said Dick behind me. I had laughed. 

4 

I laughed again, but this time not aloud. 

For though Gyp put confusion thus in all 

I had thought sure, they still remained, still 

sure. 
However useless now : nothing could be 
More sure to my instinctive inmost sense 
Than this, that Nina Farrell was there for me, 
A second time, on Auskerada, not 
For Dick who now pursued her. Much I cared. 

And much for now this hunting of the deer. 
Moths flashed across the flare; and mists that 
walked. 



1 30 Our Dancing Days 

Invisible beneath the stars, the lake, 

Took sudden being, were snow that filled our 

eyes; 
And once there came a little pang of touch, 
Another, and another, like cold tears. 
Upon my hands; so for a moment fell 
Blind rain, and blowing from half -blotted stars 
Drummed with a sound unknown and quaint 

upon 
The lily-pads about us. With the chill 
I shook the mists and my own mists from me ; 
And praying the deer would shun the valley, 

keep 
Far up the peaks and safe from me, I turned 
To look what dusky undulance the peaks 
Were hung along the night, and so caught 

breath 
To see the red star burn, a flaming eye. 
Far on the highest shadow : a forest fire. 
Of course, we saw it from Gyp's window, a 

faint 
Blowing of threaded smoke, blue on the blue. 
But now it was an eye of fire, and watched. 

And with the sudden anger of that sense. 
As if 'twas Gyp 's own tyranny even now 
That watched, I sent my heart to Nina Farrell ; 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 3 1 

Remembering how the ring upon my hand 
Slipped down her breast, remembering what her 

eyes. . . 
Oh, hell. As I remarked before. Her eyes? 
'Twas she I could not marry, she herself ! 

Gyp, did I not forgive you then and there ? 
Much more : for I had nothing to forgive : 
I sympathized. Farewell Gyp Craven too. 
And farewell youth, 'twas time to be a man. 
And oh for this last child's-play, 'twas no harm, 
No danger, I'm no shot that missed the doe. . . 

It seemed the night made sudden answer : owls, 
The horned owls, and the hoot owls, how they 

called. 
Inhuman manlike voices, bold, obscure, 
Confusing all the dark a moment loud 
With ancient prophecy, with the unknown 

word 
Uttered, of life and death. The silence fell 
As startling. For I knew the deer was there, 
We had crept downshore; the wind was fallen; 

and now 
This little creek was empty to the light, 
Alders and mirrored alders : but I knew. 
How is it one 's so sure ? It has been so 



1 32 Our Dancing Days 

Always in all my hunts. Or all but one. 
Why, no: that was no afternoon array: 
From purfled hair to jewelled slippertip 
Gyp was in gold for wooing. That time too. 
Although I missed my shot, I was not wrong. 
And the deer was here, was in the hollow glow 
Of the alders somewhere, gazing his eyes full 
Of flame ; though from the alders, as we touched 
With throb on throb of dimly thundering wings 
Bird after bird took flight, and wild with wak- 
ing 
Piped, and I named them, — blackbirds of the 

marge. 
They that from out the leaf along the wave 
Hover, and ankle-deep on lily-pads 
A dancing moment tread ; like nightmare now 
They darkled over the blooms into the gloom. 
Plain warning, but the pretty fool stood still. 
The pretty fool stood still and held her close 
And filled his eyes with kisses and thick 
kisses. . . 

Right oh. A hiss from Dick. I've got 'm, boy. 
Usher ran well, but I-Love killed the deer. 
Two dusky little lusters, but they stirred 
Together. Brimming opals. Witch's eyes. 
And in an ecstasy upon the trigger. . . 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 33 



Someone singing. Very carefully 
I lowered the silent gun, and drew the charge, 
Both cartridges, and splashed away, before 
I crumpled up. I could have laughed at it. 
Singing "What shall he have that killed the 

deer?" 
No, there were now two voices; one was Dick's, 
I could have laughed at it, a stream of oaths 
Over a plunging paddle; and one, a girl's, 
A scream of laughter. Standing in her boat. 
Holding to alders in a blaze of light. 
A mask of mad caprice, I could have laughed, 
A gargoyle now, and languished sweetness now. 
With eyes like candles waved across my face. 
'Twas only Nina Farrell, and long ago. 

Ill 

1 

My telegram to Tony brought them both, 
Bee and himself, the dears, to meet my train. 
Bee met me with a kiss. 'Twas this, no doubt, 
When now in a babble of talk of new and old 
Between the lamps in pines and on the beach 
The rainy clash and glimmer of the surf 



1 34 Our Dancing Days 

We came around the bay, decided me 
On instant celebration. Half-way round, 
The summer crew was dancing out-of-doors, 
And I snatched Bee into it. Oh, all sorts, 
A vulgar rout ; but how the image stays ! 
The ring of paper lanterns in the ring 
Of splendid blowing birches, and the floor 
Wind-touched, a mirror of those golden moons ; 
Where all the dim crisp dancers twirled and 

slid 
In an enamored circle, ghostly and sweet 
In changing lights, pale gush on gush of skirts 
And falling flowers of insteps beat on beat ; 
And through the circling glimpses now and 

then 
The faces brightening, when a lantern caught 
Wider and fatal flame : that was a charm. 
All to what naked violins. And then 
A call came, '' Circle all!" and hands all round 
We wound and counted, ''Dance with Number 

Nine!" 

Gyp 's color, curved smooth gold, what lady was 

this 
In yellow, lifting cold as twilight snow 
Her arms to me ? The lady softly said : 
' ' It 's Jimmy Usher. ' ' It was Nina Farrell. 



Two Notes and The RecKase 1 35 

And safe by six years now I danced, why not? 
With Nina Farrell, and with so qniet a heart 
I did not even pity her, or forgive. 
But in some simple fashion understood. 
I had heard a word or two. I looked for Dick. 
Oh, rouged, no doubt ; but under the gold hat, 
The red-gold hair, that jester's mask of hers 
At least was nude of coquetry ; so too 
She gave herself without reserve to that 
Cheerful abandon, out of which I made 
Our dance into a rich extravagance. 
Her arm outstretched on mine, gaily aloft. 
Yes, and her bare breast given so its depth 
Was measured in the double touch, arm-full. 
But it is only to the poisoner 
Such cups are poison. Not my cup of death. 

'Twas hands again; a lantern flamed, burned 

out. 
Above us ; brilliant in the flame was she, 
Half in the jealous color gilded, like 
A nymph in a gold leaf ; no mere nymph's eyes. 
'' Didn't you knowT' she said: "I've married 

Dick. 
Ida divorced him and I married him. 
But Jimmy, don't come see us, never, never I" 



1 36 Our Dancing Days 

2 
''Fancy Dick Farquhar!" This with much dis- 
dain 
Was Bee 's one comment. Not indeed on Dick 
His marriages, for now, the second night, 
I explained her this was none, but none at all, 
And ''All your fault!" laughed Tony kissing 

her. 
But she that had been singing to my playing 
The old way wonderful, with in her arms 
The baby lying contented, sang no more, 
Opposed no more my running off from it, 
Even with Betty coming, rather talked 
Of Betty: "Fancy Betty!" And I did run, 
I camped upon the North Peninsula, 
And 'twas as many days, I fancied though, 
Before I saw this Betty as she had years. 

With Tony gone to meet at least the letter. 
So I had fished, that afternoon, alone. 
A mile straight out, midway the azure calm, 
Floated a cork. I anchored by the cork, 
And one for each year caught my eighteen 

perch. 
Ingots of lifted treasure, shining massed 
And heavy like pure metal. Lazy sport. 
Silver and lemon-yellow, silver and green, 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 37 

They flashed from deep green water under me 
Into the sunlight ; once or twice indeed 
My hooks were double-lustered ; now and then 
The deepening cluster at the boatside plunged 
And sent a running circle ; and for talk 
There was the click and buzzing of the reel. 

Why should I fish in other waters, I? 

Wonderful waters, but this naked north, 

The burned pine-barrens and the leagues of 

sand 
Hung in the seventh heaven of pure light 
And nights of great auroras, was not mine ; 
Nor yet did any brilliant crude today 
Connect with my deep yesterdays : enough 
Of new adventure ! Well, I rowed back straight 
Into it, I fairly bumped into the launch 
From which Dick hailed me ; they were perched 

at feast 
Under the awning, over the water-play, 
Where they were moored midway the blossomed 

heads, 
The laughters and the splashes, off the beach. 

At least they should not know I ran from them. 
And they had bottles round the dish, and I 
Was thirsty. Oh, she made a little scene. 
She loved to make a little scene. She sprang 



1 38 Our Dancing Days 

Up to her feet to greet me, and with the move 
Knocked from the rail the silver chafing-dish 
Into the lake. The lamp fell at her feet. 
I leaped, I beat the flame from her, and she, 
She laughed, she ran, she shut the cabin-door 
Behind her, and we heard her laughing still. 
''Jimmy," said Dick, ''shell eat out of your 

hand. 
Pluck up a heart and take her for God's 

sake. . ." 

3 

"The round gray towers looked over the cold 

sea. 
And the empty hall looked over : for two doors 
Were open, and the swallows through the doors, 
They nested in the pillars of the hall. 
Came in and out. But the third door was shut; 
And there we sheltered till the day the 

swallows 
Quarrelling dropped afloat the thread of fire, 
Red-gold, the hair, and someone said 'Isolt!' 
And someone strode and opened the third door, 
Before it touched the flags, and we looked out, 
The three gray faces and the three gray helms 
And the gray swords and hearts of three old 

men, 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 39 

Remembering, I say of three old men, 
Sentraile, and Governale, and Berangere. 
That was the door that looked toward 
Lyonesse." 

''What's that?" said Betty when I stopped. 
''Isoltr' 

We had been playing, none else on all the 

course, 
For this was blue September, over the lake. 
The sweep of emerald shallows round the shore 
And that pure cobalt of the middle lake 
How flocked and peopled with white swans, 

with white 
Enchantments, of the whitecaps, and across 
Cloud-shadows lying of deep dense violet. 
The north was mine today. And mine long 

since 
The two great splendid plumes of smoke that 

stood, 
Their sunlit tops like roses, deeply infurled, 
Up from the slender naked uplands, there 
So near and far across, of forest fires. 

This was from somewhere high, the seventh tee. 
And Betty 's drive half -circled on the air 



1 40 Our Dancing Days 

Free as the silver killdeers, and my own 
As wild and wide; and hunting then the balls 
We found white disks, the little ivory placques 
Of meadow mushrooms, "Agarics!" she cried, 
Dappling the green like flowers, and here and 

there 
Yet beaded with the morning's dew, and each 
The dark-pink hollow of a shell beneath. 
"Hands off!" she waved. "You'll break them. 

Oh, but smell!" 
I smelled her fingers. "Jimmy, think!" she 

crooned, 
"A dish of mushrooms underneath the lamp, 
A little ale, a lot of talk, and us!" 

No doubt by Bee's contrive, Betty alone 
Had met me ; we should even dine alone ; 
The beach w^as full of farewells anyhow. 
But I protest that I did not make love 
To Betty ; not for weeks yet ; more made love 
Through her to Gyp, and back through Gyp to 

her. 
The black-silk rippled head that rich and 

strange 
Glanced in the sun, I thought 'twould be red- 
gold 
With every glance ; the slide of those dark eyes 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 4 1 

With what a little touch of coolness, what 
A little breath of strangeness, took me in, 
How lighted with a special moonlight now ! 
So now above the mushrooms I recalled 
The door toward Lyonesse. ' ' But look, ' ' I said : 
"Straight toward the flag: aren't they mush- 
rooms too?" 

4 
Two great white mushrooms bright as lamps, 

they looked 
The finest of our finding, but at once 
She caught me back from even touching them. 
*'Verna, virosa? All alike," she said. 
*'An amanita. Poison. "Why, of course, 
Nina Farrell must have found them here ! 
That's the destroying angel. The death cup." 

Others were on the slope, but these alone 
Mature ; the rest were buttons on thick stems. 
Like bulbs, like bells, old porcelain, priceless 

ware, 
Satsuma, caricaturing gross and quaint 
The double orbs of girdled womanhood ; 
But these that looked their name were great 

and prime, 
Inverted cups, a span from rim to rim, 
Pure white, but crusted with a filigree, 



1 42 Our Dancing Days 

''That was the veil" she said, ''that covered 

them," 
Like silver carving. Fine indeed as that 
White-slippered touch that freed them and up- 
turned. 
"And look what perfect rings." White garters, 

yes, 
White on the white full legs in the white skirts. 
Turn up the cup, there was a girl within it. 
Bloodless. Oh, too wild a f ancj, too 
Fantastic. I was cold. I took my time, 
Fain of the flame upon my lighting pipe, 
And, lord, how fain of Betty that kicked free 
Those nipples of white death ; we made of it 
A game together ; and not till we were back 
And Betty gathering my cap full of them. 
The mushrooms that were life not death, and 

though 
I knew the whole thing now, did I make sure. 

"Nina Farrell? What's she been doing now?" 

And Betty sat upon her feet and stared. 
"Haven't you heard it, Jimmy? Oh, you've 

been 
Away from mails. They died at Mackinac. 



Two Notes and The Rechase 1 43 

She and Dick Farquhar. Poisoned with those 

things. 
The day after you ran away from me." 

''It's two notes and the rechase, Betty," I said 
"Remember that, the whistle we all used?" 
And sitting close beside I told her all 
The tales she knew indeed, but now one tale, 
Of Nina Farrell, the gentian, the jacklight, 
And now the death cups, and the two great 

plumes 
And pillars of the sunlit smoke across 
Looked like them. "And I climbed aboard the 

launch, 
And Nina, jumping up to greet me, knocked—" 

Betty gasped ''Oh, lord!" across the word. 

"Yes, knocked the dish into the lake," I said. 
"And then she screamed, and I was beating off 
The lamp-flame from her skirts. The last of all 
To clasp her knees. A scream of laughter, yes. 
That was the death cup, Betty. The death cup." 

Betty sat still and very still. Her hand 
Had crept to mine between us in the grass. 



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